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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT: 



THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

AND THE PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO 
DALLAS • ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO. ? Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OP CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



THE 

GOSPEL OF JESUS 



AND 



The Problems of Democracy 



HENRY C.VEDDER 

PROFESSOR OF CHURCH HISTORY IN CROZER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
AND AUTHOR OF "SOCIALISM AND THE ETHICS OF JESUS," 
"THE REFORMATION IN GERMANY," ETC. 



Jieto gorb 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1914 



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Copyright, 1914 
Ey TEE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1914 



SEP 10 1314 



0Af° 



CI.A379427 









TO 

THE MILLIONS WHO TOIL 

WITHOUT HOPE 

THAT THE THOUSANDS MAY ENJOY 

WITHOUT THOUGHT 



PREFACE 

The man who to-day proclaims the Gospel of Jesus 
in the spirit of his Master must expect misunderstand- 
ing, abuse and perhaps persecution. Why not ? Shall 
the disciple be above his Master? 

Still in heaven's name the deeds of hell are done : 
Still on the high-road, 'neath the noonday sun 
The fires of hate are lit for them who dare 
Follow their Lord along the untrodden way. 

I am not suprised or disquieted, therefore, that I 
am accused of being a dangerous heretic. And it is 
with no expectation of getting rid of that reputation 
that I here protest that I have no quarrel with ortho- 
doxy. The kernel of it I believe to be truth, as 
firmly as the most orthodox. I find nothing false in 
it, save that kind of falsity which results from a lay- 
ing of the emphasis in the wrong place. The change 
of emphasis that I urge, from the metaphysics of 
Paul to the ethics of Jesus, involves such a difference 
of perspective, such a readjustment of magnitudes and 
values, as appears like heresy to the more conservative. 
But after a time they will learn to make the adjust- 
ment, and will perceive that nothing valued by the 
old orthodoxy has been lost, though its form may have 
been not a little altered. 

vii 



Vlll PREFACE 

We need a reconstructed theology. The theology 
of all Churches has been dominated by monarchical 
ideas : it needs to be recast in the mould of democracy. 
It has been permeated with ideas of special privilege, 
such as were unavoidable when aristocracy ruled the 
world ; it needs to be restated in terms of equal rights. 
As my critics kindly remind me, I am no theologian; 
nevertheless I have endeavored to make a modest con- 
tribution to such restatement. 

Some readers will detect an inconsistency. They 
will say, at least to themselves : "Here is a man who 
advocates one thing and does another. He condemns 
the wage system, yet works for a salary. He is strong 
against monopolies, yet copyrights his book. He de- 
clares all dividends and interest immoral, yet is sup- 
ported from the income of endowments invested in 
stocks, bonds and mortgages." All of which is a true 
bill. And therefore here is a good place to emphasize 
a thing that should never be overlooked in our dis- 
cussion of social evils : the individual is powerless in 
the grip of the social system. He has to live his life 
under social conditions as they are, not as he thinks 
they should be, not as he hopes they will be. This is 
just as true of the millionaire as of the wage earner. 
The individual is powerless, except (and note the ex- 
ception, for it is a large one) that he is morally bound, 
while reluctantly accepting facts as they are, to protest 
against them with all his power, and strive as best 
he may to amend them. Inconsistency will become a 
serious charge when the individual has the power to 
be consistent. In present social conditions, only that 



PREFACE IX 

man is to be esteemed ethically culpable who acquiesces 
in a social system that he knows to be iniquitous and 
eagerly uses its iniquities to advance his own interests. 
Some readers of my "Socialism and the Ethics of 
Jesus," while commending certain features of it, re- 
marked that it was too much given to glittering gen- 
eralities, and afforded too little help to those who hon- 
estly wish to do something toward the betterment of 
the social order, but do not know where or how to 
begin. Something more "practical," it was intimated, 
was a desideratum. In this book I have tried to be 
practical. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Gospel and the Awakening Church . . i 

II. The Problem of Social Justice ...» 48 

III. The Woman Problem 85 

IV. The Problem of the Child 108 

V. The Problem of the Slum ..... 148 

VI. The Problem of Vice 182 

VII. The Problem of Crime 216 

VIII. The Problem of Disease 250 

IX/ The Problem of Poverty 282 

X. The Problem of Lawlessness .... 332 

Appendix : A. Bibliography ; B. Programs for 

Social Reform 377 



THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 
AND THE PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY 



THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

CHAPTER I 

THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 

"In the fulness of the times, God sent forth his 
Son," said Paul. However wide scope may be given 
to these words by an interpreter, they cannot be taken 
to mean less than a process of social and religious 
development among the Hebrew people, of which the 
Gospel was the culmination. It follows that the Gos- 
pel cannot be adequately understood, if studied apart 
from the conditions out of which it sprang. 

I 

Before their entrance into Canaan the Hebrews had 
been a collection of tribes or clans, twelve in number, 
according to their unbroken and uncontradicted tradi- 
tion. They believed themselves to be descendants of 
a common ancestor, and hence bound together by those 
ties of kinship that have always been so powerful 
among primitive peoples. They had been nomads, but 
in their new home a part became cultivators of the 

i 



2 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

soil, while another part welt in towns and were for 
the first time made acquainted with civilization, the 
art of living together in cries, with all that such life 
implies, whether of virtue or of vice. Private prop- 
erty in land now developed among them, as it usually 
does when a nomadic people becomes agricultural. A 
careful study of the book of Judges discloses these 
social changes among the Hebrews of that period. 

Then came the period of the kings. The Hebrew 
kingdom, like all Oriental monarchies, was a military 
despotism, maintained by a standing army, the nucleus 
of which was a small body of foreign mercenaries. 1 
The throne also relied on a landed aristocracy, which 
owed its special privileges to royal favor and in turn 
gave its support to its benefactor. Samuel had 
warned the people that such would be their experience : 

"And he [the king] will take your fields and your vine- 
yards and your olive-yards, the best of them, and give 
them to his servants ; and he will take the tenth of your 
seed and of your vineyards, and give to his officers and 
to his servants ; and your male and female slaves and 
your goodliest young men and your asses, he will take 
and put to his work; he will take the tenth of your sheep; 
and ye shall be his servants." (i Sam. 8:15-17.) 

1 The Gittites and their leader Ittai (2 Sam. 15 : 18-22) seem 
to have been such a band. Benaiah is later mentioned as com- 
mander of similar forces (2 Sam. 20:23). The "mighty men" 
of David (2 Sam. 23:8) were probably officers of such troops. 
It was Benaiah who secured Solomon his throne (1 K. 1:8-11, 
32-34, 44-46). These gibborim, as the main instruments of the 
kings in maintaining their supremacy and doing injustice, were 
hated by the prophets (Hos. 10: 13, 14; Am. 2: 14-16; Is. 3: 1-3). 



THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 3 

By such means David and Solomon came to the 
throne; by such means they were kept in power — 
no wonder there was a revolution after the latter's 
death. But the revolution did not improve matters 
much. The history of the Hebrews down to the cap- 
tivity is a story of the growth of royal and aristocratic 
power at the expense of the people. The great landed 
estates increased rapidly, and the peasant- farmers 
were reduced to poverty, the status of "hired ser- 
vants," or slavery (2 K. 4: i). 1 

This gave occasion for a social struggle the traces 
of which are clearly marked in the writings of the 
prophets. Ahab's seizing of Naboth's vineyard may 
be regarded as no unusual outrage, unless that it was 
unusually conspicuous (1 K. 21). The prophets bit- 
terly denounced this oppression: 

Woe to those who devise mischief 
And work out evil on their beds ! . . . 
And they covet fields and seize them; 
And houses and take them away: 
And they oppress a man and his house, 
Even a man and his heritage (Mi. 3: 1, 2). 

1 The tenth commandment is an unimpeachable witness to the 
antiquity of slavery among the Hebrews. The words "man 
servant" and "maid servant" in our English version translate 
the Hebrew words for male and female slaves. They could 
be "coveted" only because they were property. The same is 
true of the wife. The form of the commandment is only pos- 
sible in a patriarchal society, where the wife was a man's prop- 
erty equally with his chattels and slaves. 



4 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

Jehovah enters into judgment with the elders of his 

people 
And with the princes thereof: 
"It is ye that have devoured the vineyard ; 
The plunder of the poor is in your houses" (Is. 3: 14). 

Woe unto those who join house to house, 
Who- , add field to field until there is no room, 
And ye are made to dwell alone in the midst of the land 
(Is. 5:8). 

Ezekiel rebukes the ruling class for their greed : 
"And the prince shall not take of the people's inher- 
itance by oppression to eject them from their pos- 
session; he shall give an inheritance to his sons out of 
his own possession; that my people be not scattered 
every man from his possession" (46: 18). Even kin- 
ship did not prevent exploitation (Mi. 7: 2; Is. 9: 19; 
Jer. 9:4). An interesting incident in the struggle is 
the protest against private property in land made by 
the Rechabites, the significance of whose prolonged 
separate existence has been curiously missed by 
Christian students of the Bible. It is a pity to spoil 
the thousands of temperance sermons that have been 
preached from Jer. 35 : 6-10, but the story has nothing 
whatever to do with temperance, and everything to 
do with this agrarian struggle among the Jews. Jona- 
dab, the son of Rechab, gave this command to his 
children : 

Ye shall not drink wine, neither ye nor your sons for- 
ever ; neither shall ye build house, nor sow seed, nor plant 
vineyards, nor shall ye possess any ; but all your days 



THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 5 

shall ye dwell in tents ; that ye may live many days in the 
land where ye sojourn. 

The injunction to drink no wine, as is clear from 
the accompanying injunction, was based solely on the 
idea that the drinking of wine was a recognition of 
the right to plant vineyards, which again was insepa- 
rable from owning land. For the same reason the 
Rechabites might not sow seed or build house, since 
these equally implied recognition of property in land. 
They were to revert to the nomad life of their fore- 
fathers, and renounce ownership of the soil, even right 
of occupation and use. 

We better appreciate the intensity of feeling shown 
by the prophets when we realize that they came from 
the exploited class. Elijah came from the hill country 
of Gilead, Elisha from a village of Ephraim, Amos 
from Tekoa in Judah, and Micah and Jeremiah from 
villages of the same region. They represented the 
peasantry, the tillers of the soil, the keepers of the 
sheep, the class that was suffering most from the exac- 
tions of the rich and powerful land-owning nobles. It 
is this "class-consciousness," as it is the fashion now 
to call it, which puts the caloric into these words of 
Isaiah : 

Ye shall no longer trample my courts to bring oblations ; 
Vain is incense, it is an abomination to me. . . . 
Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul 

hates. . . . 
Wash you, make you clean; 
Put away the evil of your doings from mine eyes ; 



6 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

Cease to do evil. 

Learn to do good, 

Seek out justice, 

Set right the oppressor. 

Judge the orphan, 

Plead for the widow (i :n-iy). 

And these like words from Amos : 

I hate, I despise your feasts, 
And I take no delight in your festivals. . . . 
Take away from me the noise of thy songs, 
For I will not hear the melody of thy harps. 
But let justice roll down like waters, 
And righteousness like an unfailing stream (5:21, 23, 
24). 

And Micah is "very bold" when he says: 

With what shall I come before Jehovah, 

And bow myself before God on high? 

Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, 

With calves of a year old? 

Will Jehovah be pleased with thousands of rams, 

Or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? 

Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, 

The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? 

He has told thee, O man, what is good; 

And what does Jehovah require of thee, 

But to do justice, and to love mercy, 

And to walk humbly with thy God? (6:6-8). 

The two great words of the prophetic literature of 
the Hebrews are "justice" and "righteousness," and 



THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 7 

the prophets insist with endless iteration that formal 
piety is no substitute for these in the eyes of Jehovah. 
Both are social words; both have to do with social 
relations; together they inculcate on the son of Israel 
such conduct as is due from him to his blood brother, 
son of a common father, according to the old ethics of 
the clan. 

Along with this social struggle went the religious: 
the contest between the exclusive worship of Jehovah, 
and the coordinate worship of the Baalim, or gods of 
the region before the Hebrew invasion. The royal 
house and the aristocracy were inclined to a "liberal' ' 
policy ; they made frequent alliances, political and mat- 
rimonial, with the heathen, the result of which was 
to admit the worship of Baalim as subordinate gods — ■ 
to establish, in fact, a Hebrew pantheon in which 
Jehovah should hold some such position as Zeus and 
Jupiter held in the Greek and Roman systems. The 
wronged peasant- farmer class was, as a whole, faith- 
ful to Jehovah and his exclusive worship. Hence 
the prophets mingle, in almost equal proportions, de- 
nunciations of the idolatry of the ruling class and of 
their social injustice. In both they are sinning against 
Jehovah. In the prophetic literature, the identifica- 
tion of the social and the religious struggle is nearly 
complete, if not quite. 

The positive side of the prophetic teaching was the 
announcement of a twofold message: first, Jehovah 
would punish this double iniquity of the rich and 
powerful. The monarchy would disappear, and Jeru- 
salem would be destroyed, unless the rulers returned 



8 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

to Jehovah and caused justice to prevail. The cap- 
tivity fulfilled this prediction and brought the fierce 
social and religious struggle to an end. The second 
element in the prophetic message was that a Deliverer 
would arise, a Prince who would reign according to 
the will of Jehovah ; and glowing pictures were drawn 
of the glory, righteousness, peace and prosperity that 
all should experience in this new kingdom. From this 
point we trace the development of that Messianic hope, 
that idea of Redemption, which is the unique fea- 
ture of Judaism, differentiating it unmistakably from 
all other ancient religious systems. The Bible is the 
history of Redemption and the Gospel is the culmina- 
tion of the story — Saviour is the distinctive Christian 
word, and salvation the distinctive Christian idea. 

The prophetic idea of Redemption is two-sided : the 
individual is to be redeemed from sin to righteous- 
ness, and society is to be redeemed from injustice and 
oppression to social righteousness. But of these two 
ideas, no reader of the prophets can deny that the 
latter is made incomparably the more vivid nd em- 
phatic. Yet when the Jews came back from captivity 
to rebuild Jerusalem, the prophets and their teachings 
no longer swayed their minds. They came back con- 
vinced monotheists, indeed, loyal to Jehovah as the 
only God, but they came aristocrats also. The proph- 
ets were thenceforth relegated to second place among 
their religious writings, the first place of authority 
being given to the Thorah, or law, which established 
the privileges and prerogatives of the priesthood on a 
secure foundation. Thenceforth a priestly caste ruled 



THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 9 

the nation. An intellectual basis for their growing 
encroachments was furnished by the rise of the 
Rabbis, the teachers and interpreters of the law; and 
was further completed by the synagogue, designed pri- 
marily for the teaching of the law in every Jewish 
community. 

The farmer-peasants had probably never been de- 
ported in large numbers, especially from Galilee; and 
there was now a recrudescence of the social struggle. 
There is a moving picture of the social distress of the 
people in Nehemiah V, and of the effort at reform 
made by him, which probably had only a temporary 
effect. We lack full materials for the study of this 
struggle, but the clear-eyed can discern plain evidence 
of its continuance in the Jewish apocryphal books, es- 
pecially Maccabees and the Wisdom of Sirach. The 
growing doctrine of Messianism among the Jews dur- 
ing this period is testimony, both to the bitterness of 
the struggle and to the encouragement given to the 
oppressed by this hope. In Galilee, among the peas- 
antry, the Messianic idea seems to have taken the 
form mainly of hope of social deliverance. In Jeru- 
salem, among the aristocracy, especially after the loss 
of independence and subjection to Rome, the Mes- 
sianic hope assumed a political form and was intensely 
anti-Roman. 

The limitations of these ideas that we have been 
tracing, as they prevailed among the Jews in the time 
of Jesus, must also be understood if we would get a 
full comprehension of the Gospel. Jehovah was the 
Father of Israel, but only the creator of other men. 



IO THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

The Jews were a chosen people, having a relation to 
Jehovah that no other people could possibly sustain. 
Redemption, whether of the individual or of society, 
was for Jews alone. Messiah would sway his scepter 
over all the nations, but to break them in pieces and 
make them subject to the Jew. 1 Social justice was 
justice owed from Jew to Jew, because all Jews were 
brothers by descent from Abraham. It is the old 
clan idea of justice, essentially unmodified, that we 
find throughout the Old Testament. This explains 
what would otherwise be incomprehensible ethics. 
The Jew might not take interest from his "neighbor," 
that is, another Jew, but might lend at interest to a for- 
eigner (Deut. 23: 19, 20; Ex. 22:25-27). Jews must 
not eat anything that died of itself, but might give it 
to a stranger in the gates or sell it to a foreigner 
(Deut. 14:21). Jews must not hold each other in 
slavery, at most after six years a Jewish slave must 
be freed (Ex. 21:2), but they might buy of foreigners 
and hold them slaves forever (Lev. 25 : 44-46). Jere- 
miah stresses this principle heavily, and clearly implies 
that violation of such brotherly rights was one of the 
crying sins of his times (34:8, 9). 

No ideas of God sustaining equal relations to all 
men, of a Redemption for the whole world, of hitman 
rights apart from clan rights, can be found in the 
Judaism in which Jesus was bred. 

1 Ps. 2:8, 9; Dan. 2:44; Ps. 47:2-4. There are occasional 
glimpses of wider outlook in the prophets (Is. 19:19-25; Zech. 
8:22, 23), but they never became popular, never were embodied 
in the system that we know as Judaism. 



THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH II 



II 



Into such a nation as this, himself bred under the 
influence of such ideas, came Jesus proclaiming the 
Good News of a deliverance for all men. Of the vari- 
ous ideas contained in his Gospel, the fundamental 
thing was the ideal of God that he made known. God 
is the one Being who is good, the fountain of all good- 
ness. And "good" means the same when Jesus predi- 
cates it of God, as when we ascribe goodness to man 
— that is, it is the same in quality; God's goodness 
differs from man's only in degree, in extent. When 
we have formed our highest ideal of goodness, God 
corresponds to that ideal, yet exceeds it. He has 
every excellence that we can conceive, without any 
alloy of evil, in the highest possible energy. 

All accounts of Jesus make it plain that he was 
conscious of perfect moral integrity; he challenged his 
opponents to point out any defect in character or con- 
duct. That on one occasion he refused to be called 
"good" (Mark 10: 18), may argue that he was con- 
scious of being temptable, and therefore of needing 
prayer and communion with God such as would keep 
him ever in accord with his Father's will, but is in no 
way incompatible with an unclouded consciousness 
that his loyal allegiance was in fact unbroken. Jesus 
makes the sweeping claim that he, he alone, has com- 
plete knowledge of the Father (Luke 10: 21-24), that 
he alone is capable of imparting such knowledge to 
those willing to receive it. This is his claim to su- 



12 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

premacy as religious teacher, and the ground of the 
demand that he makes for trust in him, or faith. To 
confess him or to deny him is a matter of transcendent 
importance, because it determines a man's moral 
standing (Luke 12 : 8). This is also why a loyal fol- 
lower of Jesus can admit no other to be his equal in 
spiritual authority, can place the words of no other 
teacher on a level with his. 

Jesus proclaimed God a Being whose nature can be 
best expressed in the one phrase, "holy love," and can 
be made clearest to us under the figure of Fatherhood. 
Greek philosophy made men acquainted with a meta- 
physical Deity; Jesus introduced men to a Heavenly 
Father. He first taught us to call God "Our Father 
who art in Heaven." This Father in Heaven he did 
not hesitate to explain by representing an earthly 
father at his best, as in the parable of the Prodigal 
Son. There is no room in that parable for the idea 
of a God who is angry with the wicked and hates 
them, or a forgiveness of sins that depends on the 
propitiation of a stern Judge by a vicarious bearing 
of the punishment due. These things may be con- 
ceived of a metaphysical Deity, not of a Father-God. 

Jesus taught his disciples to pray to this Father in 
Heaven, "Thy will be done, as in heaven so on earth." 
But what is God's will ? Fantastic answers have been 
given to that question by speculative theologians, but 
in the light of the teaching of Jesus about his Father 
the one possible reply is : the will of a Being whose 
nature is holy love can be nothing else than to make 
and keep all his creatures like himself. It is the will 



THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 1 3 

of God that his goodness shall prevail in earth as in 
Heaven. Hence the salvation that Jesus came to give 
men must consist, not in deliverance from a penalty, 
not in appeasing a Judge, but in helping men to be- 
come good, to become like their Father in Heaven. 
It is not attainment of formal "justification," but im- 
partation of new character, the power of an endless 
life. This is the heart of the Good News that Jesus 
proclaimed and that he sent his disciples out into the 
world to teach in his name. 

But as Jesus revealed God under the figure of Fa- 
therhood, so he described his own mission under a 
figure: he said to men, "The kingdom of God is at 
hand." He declared that he was the anointed (Mes- 
siah) of God for the purpose of establishing this king- 
dom. And in discourses and parables, by word and 
deed, he made clear to his disciples what he meant 
by this kingdom, what sort of men were to be its 
subjects, and what it was fitted to accomplish in the 
world. If we would know what the Gospel of Jesus 
really means, therefore, we must study his teachings 
regarding the kingdom. 

Jesus taught that his kingdom is both spiritual and 
material, both visible and invisible; it comes first in 
the hearts of men, but it becomes manifest in their 
lives. It is so different from the kingdoms of this 
world, so contrary to the ordinary desires and instincts 
of men, as to demand entire reconstruction of charac- 
ter, complete reversal of thought and purpose. And 
this Jesus again describes under a figure : such a 
change is tantamount to new birth. This must come 



14 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

from above; man cannot effect so great an alteration 
in himself ; a Power not himself that makes for right- 
eousness must establish in him this love of righteous- 
ness. Hence Jesus adds, only the meek, the teachable, 
the childlike in spirit can enter the kingdom; the 
proud, the wise in their own conceit, the self -centered 
are not excluded from the kingdom — they exclude 
themselves. This new life, this new character, is the 
beginning of God-likeness; it is the first step in the 
process of growing into the Father's goodness; and 
this possibility of goodness, this approach to the char- 
acter of the one perfectly good Being, constitutes sal- 
vation. It is the only way in which man can be de- 
livered from the power of evil. 

"Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, as in heaven, 
so on earth." When we utter these words we pray 
for the coming of a society of all those who seek the 
doing of God's will, a society all of whose institutions 
shall be ordered according to the will of God. Fun- 
damental in that will is the doing of justice between 
man and man. The distinction between sins against 
our brother and sins against God is possible only in 
thought, and perhaps should be considered impossible 
even there ; in fact, a sin against our brother is a sin 
against God. That basic truth invalidates most of 
our current ethics, and quite as much of our current 
theology. It entirely discredits the evangelism of the 
past, and calls for a new evangel. Men used to be 
converted to God alone, and think it quite sufficient; 
now they must be converted to God and their fellows, 
or we can no longer recognize them as converted. 



THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 1 5 

And half of those who call themselves Christians — 
and this is speaking very moderately — have never been 
converted to their fellows. This is righteous judg- 
ment, because the same who said, "Judge not, that ye 
be not judged/' said also, "Therefore by their fruits 
ye shall know them." 

In his teaching regarding the kingdom Jesus there- 
fore proclaimed a social revolution, but not by vio- 
lence. The acceptance of his precepts would now as 
then lead to a complete overturning and reconstruc- 
tion of social institutions, but peacefully and in the 
spirit of mutual good will. This teaching of revolu- 
tion and rejection of force explains why Jesus was 
popular in Galilee and hated in Judea — the Messianic 
ideas of these two regions greatly differed. The wis- 
dom of his program was vindicated by the later his- 
tory of the Jews : it was a violent attempt at revolu- 
tion that caused the destruction of Jerusalem and the 
scattering of the Jewish nation. His teaching has also 
been vindicated by the uncounted attempts of his mis- 
guided disciples to set up by violence the kingdom 
whose essence is righteousness and peace and inward 
joy. In all such cases men have found that they who 
take the sword will perish by the sword. 

Neither his own age nor any of the ages that fol- 
lowed could comprehend such a Gospel as Jesus 
taught. Even the faith of the prophet who first saw 
in Jesus the Hope of Israel seems to have wavered, for 
he sent messengers to ask, "Art thou he that should 
come, or look we for another ?" The reply of Jesus 
has been criticized as an evasion of John's question 



1 6 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

(Luke 7: 19-23), and such it may seem to the care- 
less reader. In view of all the circumstances it was 
equivalent to saying : "I am not the political Messiah 
whom many expect, but my works show that I am the 
Servant of Jehovah whom his most spiritual prophet 
described. Happy the man who can see me for what 
I am, and is not disturbed because I do not correspond 
to his preconceived ideal." What answer could have 
been more to the point, or more comforting to the 
imprisoned Baptist? We must recollect that the Ori- 
ental habit is to reply to a query indirectly, not in the 
blunt, direct Western fashion. 

The spirit of the Gospel was never set forth more 
clearly, even by Jesus himself, than in his address in 
the synagogue at Nazareth (Luke 4: 18, 19). The 
lesson of the day was from Isaiah, 61 :i, 2: 

The Spirit of Jehovah is upon me, 

Because he anointed me to preach good news to the poor ; 

He has sent me to proclaim deliverance to captives, 

And recovering of sight to blind men, 

To send crushed ones away free, 

To proclaim an acceptable year of Jehovah. 

"To-day," said Jesus, "has this Scripture been ful- 
filled in your ears." The Gospel means liberty, it is 
glad tidings to the poor, it is deliverance of all who 
are in bondage. A Christianity that does not mean 
this has become divorced from the teaching of its 
Founder, and no longer is worthy of his name. Jesus 
refused to have his Glad Tidings, his joyous, hopeful 
message of deliverance, wrapped in the swaddling- 



THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH I J 

clothes of rabbinic ceremonialism. Fasting and sad- 
ness were as incompatible with his work and procla- 
mation of new truth as they would be at a bridal feast. 
There was nothing in common between the old legal- 
istic system and the new ideas of God and life that he 
taught. 

Freedom, equality, brotherhood, are the watchwords 
of the new faith, yet the disciples of Jesus have ill 
learned this, while others have not perceived it at 
all, or have perceived only to reject with scorn. 
Among the latter is Nietzsche. "Christianity," said 
he, "is the revolt of all that creeps upon the ground 
against what is elevated." Precisely: it is the revolt 
of democracy against aristocracy. Christianity as 
Jesus taught it, the Gospel as he declared it, is just 
that, and what the small-souled philosopher thought 
its disgrace is its glory. But Christianity as practiced 
to-day is something vastly different; if it has not gone 
over to the aristocracy, as some charge, it has trimmed 
between the two, ashamed to desert democracy alto- 
gether, while its heart has been in the opposite camp. 
Or, to change the figure, the Church has been trying 
to ride two horses, and as democracy and aristocracy 
get further apart every day, pretty soon something 
is going to drop. 

Brotherhood is on the whole the greatest of the 
Gospel watchwords. Jesus taught that the members 
of the kingdom are brothers, because they are all 
children of one Father. He who cannot see in other 
men his brothers has no warrant from Jesus to call 
God his Father. The two things are inseparable. All 



l8 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

men are, actually or potentially, brothers to a disciple 
of Jesus. That a man is "saved" means that he has 
begun to see a brother in every other man, that he is 
beginning to love his fellows as God loves them; and 
in practice that means that he give to every other man 
the treatment of a brother. This is the very heart of 
the Gospel, as Jesus expressed it in his twin precept, 
"Thou shalt love thy God with all thy heart" and 
"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." 

And how searching a test of the reality of this love 
Jesus gives us : "If thou art offering thy gift at the 
altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath 
aught against thee, leave there thy gift before the 
altar and go thy way, first be reconciled to thy brother, 
and then come and offer thy gift." That is a simple 
but decisive method by which any one may decide 
whether he is possessed by the spirit of love that Jesus 
taught : Am I more disturbed by the wrong that I do 
my fellow than by the wrong that I suffer from him? 
If my brother has aught against me, if I have done 
him a wrong, I must make myself right with him 
before I try to get right with God, says Jesus. The 
process cannot be reversed. How different this is 
from the spirit of paganism, which regarded it as the 
highest eulogy of a dead man to say of him that none 
had done more good to his friends or harm to his foes. 
"But I say unto you," said Jesus, "love your enemies, 
do good to them that hate you." 

Love requires not only that we right the wrongs 
we have done, but that we forgive the wrongs done 
us. Jesus taught his disciples to pray, "Forgive us 



THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 1 9 

our debts, as we have forgiven our debtors." God's 
forgiveness is not mere remission of penalty, but ad- 
mission to a new experience of his love; and this is 
impossible until the spirit of love takes possession of 
our hearts and rules us. This duty of forgiveness is 
put in its most striking form in the parable of the two 
servants — he who will receive forgiveness must be- 
stow forgiveness. And yet, one of the saddest things 
about moral evil is that we cannot always forgive our 
brother: the possibility of forgiveness is limited by 
the receptiveness of others. The heart so calloused by 
wrong-doing that it has lost its susceptibility, and no 
longer responds to the voice of love, cannot be for- 
given, because it has become incapable of receiving 
forgiveness. If men will not accept love it cannot be 
forced upon them, and there is no way in which an 
offense may be blotted out so long as the offender 
will not let it go. 

Ill 

The Gospel on its practical side is brotherhood. 
The content of this idea is large, but it cannot be 
supposed to mean less than these four things : equal 
rights for all, the supremacy of the common good, 
mutual dependence and service, and active good will 
to all. 

Equal rights for all. The Gospel of Jesus is pure 
democracy. Jesus trusted the people as completely as 
the greater part of those who teach in his name dis- 
trust them. Many fancy themselves democrats be- 



20 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

cause, as they say, they believe in "the rule of the peo- 
ple"; but these are half-hearted democrats who, on 
cross-examination, avow their belief in the rule of the 
people, not by the people themselves, but "by a repre- 
sentative part of the people," wiser and better fitted 
to rule than the whole people. A genuine democrat 
is one who believes heartily in the whole people and 
rejoices that he is one of them. If there was a "lower 
class" in the day of Jesus, he belonged to it ; if there 
were any "common people," he was one of them. The 
true disciple of Jesus offers the Pharisee's prayer, 
with the negative omitted : "O God, I thank thee that 
I am as other men are." He gladly shares the com- 
mon lot. 

One of Abraham Lincoln's truest sayings was : "No 
man is good enough to govern another man without 
that man's consent." It is easier, as all human experi- 
ence shows, to educate a democracy to govern itself, 
than to train a "better class" to rule the rest of the 
people. Power is corrupting except when diffused. 
When everybody has as much power as anybody, tyr- 
anny and corruption vanish together. It is no ques- 
tion of a vicious aristocracy — every class is vicious. 
The working class is no more righteous, no more 
worthy to bear rule, than any other, and only flatterers 
and deceivers tell the working class otherwise. The 
three-cornered struggle now in progress between or- 
ganizations, each claiming to represent the true inter- 
ests of the workers, is testimony irrefutable that the 
workers yield to the temptations of class selfishness 
as quickly as any other class. The trades unions of 



THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 21 

the American Federation of Labor are a labor aris- 
tocracy that looks with disdain on the interests of the 
unskilled labor of the Industrial Workers of the 
World, while the Socialist Party claims to have at 
heart the interests of both, but is in imminent danger 
of failing to gain the confidence of either. There is 
no way out of the labyrinth but the way of Jesus: 
the Gospel of brotherhood and equal rights. 

"Democracy is a failure," cry some faint-hearted 
Americans. Pseudo-democracy or semi-democracy 
has failed, beyond a doubt. When our Federal Con- 
stitution was adopted, of a population of three mil- 
lions about one hundred and twenty thousand were 
qualified voters. Democracy indeed! Real democ- 
racy, real political democracy even, has never yet had 
existence in America, much less trial, though it is 
now beginning to prevail; and industrial democracy 
is still only a dream of the time to be. But pseudo- 
democracy, failure though it is, has accomplished 
everything of value, everything that will endure, in 
the development of America. What may we not ex- 
pect from a century of real democracy, equal rights 
for all? 

The supremacy of the common good. This nega- 
tives all selfish striving, all merely personal ambition. 
It strikes at the root of all modern business enter- 
prise, the end of which is personal profit without 
regard to the common good. Jesus called the concen- 
trated wealth of his time Mammon, and said plainly 
to those who would be his disciples, "You cannot 
serve God and Mammon." But his Church to-dav 



22 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

knows better; it serves both — God with the lip, Mam- 
mon with the heart. It cannot be denied : that bastard, 
cringing, sycophantic thing that our age calls Chris- 
tianity is nothing else than the organized worship of 
Mammon. Mammon is the god of this present world, 
and all who desire to increase their material posses- 
sions rather than their spiritual, all who are actuated 
by ambition rather than by love, all who would be 
greatest rather than least, rule rather than serve, are 
his willing worshipers and slaves. Righteousness, 
truth and love are foolishness to Mammon; they are 
an impractical ideal; there is no profit in them. But 
in the sight of Jesus they are the whole of life, all 
that makes life worth living. Mammon urges men 
to multiply their possessions; Jesus urges men to en- 
rich their souls. Mammon is property, and that the 
world may move forward and upward Mammon must 
fall. For Mammon is the parent of typhoid and tuber- 
culosis; Mammon drives our daughters into prostitu- 
tion and our sons into prison; Mammon builds the 
slum and populates it ; Mammon permits some to feast 
sumptuously and to play, while it compels others to 
toil and sweat and gnaw crusts; Mammon creates the 
conflict of classes and prepares revolutions; Mammon 
is the arch-enemy of God and man. 

How futile, in view of this teaching of Jesus, is 
most of what passes for religion. "To such a pass 
has the Church come that it fights under the banner 
of Jesus against his Gospel. It wields the sword of 
the spirit — to quench all that is spiritual. It uses the 
word of God — in order to falsify the divine. It is 



THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 23 

pious, but its piety is godlessness." 1 The man who 
piously trusts in the blood of Jesus to save him, 2 but 
owns a tenement on which there is no fire escape, will 
find that the blood of Jesus was shed in vain, so far 
as he is concerned, if that house burns and destroys 
the lives of its inmates. For that man is nothing less 
than a murderer, and a far greater criminal than the 
man who in passion takes the life of his fellow, for 
he slays in cold blood and for mere sordidness. That 
sort of faith without works is the deadest of all things 
that profess to be spiritual. The Christianity of our 
day is mainly of that type; it is a Christianity of 
ostentatious orthodoxy, of large professions, that 
scorns the real Gospel of Jesus. The hard self-right- 
eousness of the Christian world rules it out of the 
kingdom of brotherhood. Now, as of old, it is easier 
to bring the Prodigal home than to soften the proud 
elder son and make him a true child of his gracious 
Father. 

Mutual dependence and service. Jesus could not 
grant their mother's prayer for the sons of Zebedee, 
and place them on his right hand and his left in the 

1 Kutter, "They Must," p. 53- 

2 The late J. Pierpont Morgan inserted in his will the fol- 
lowing profession of faith : "I commit my soul into the hands 
of my Saviour, in full confidence that, having redeemed it and 
washed it in His most precious blood, He will present it faultless 
before the throne of my Heavenly Father; and I entreat my 
children to maintain and defend, at all hazard, and at any cost 
of personal sacrifice, the blessed doctrine of complete atonement 
of sin through the blood of Jesus Christ once offered, and 
through that alone." This was hailed by the orthodox religious 
press as "a wonderful testimony." It was. 



24 TttE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

kingdom, because these seats were not to be given 
away as a favor, being reserved as a reward for 
service. The high places are for those who seek the 
good of others, not their own — for those who drink 
their Master's cup of sacrifice, for those who are bap- 
tized with the baptism of his vicarious suffering. 

This is what Jesus meant by his teaching regarding 
stewardship. He taught men that they do not own, 
but owe ; that their rights are far less important than 
their duties. Power, wealth, learning, are not means 
of ministering to one's selfishness, but opportunities 
for the service of one's fellows. Those who have 
most must serve most The greatest in the kingdom 
is he that makes fullest and wisest use of his oppor- 
tunities and rises to eminence as servant of all. Stew- 
ardship is the exact opposite of exploitation, the sel- 
fish using of one's fellows to advance one's own inter- 
est and increase one's own wealth. Stewardship is 
as exactly opposed also to the selfishness of the idle 
rich, who devote all their energies to "pleasure" — and 
secure only their own boredom. 

Brotherhood does not imply that all men shall serve 
in the same way, or that the service of all is equally 
valuable; but brotherhood does imply that all shall 
serve. The man who refuses to serve denies his 
brotherhood and puts himself outside the pale of 
human society. There is no place for such a man in 
a rightly ordered world. He is the true outlaw, and 
by his own act. This is the teaching of Jesus. His 
disciples must proclaim and exemplify it, and let 



THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 25 

Nietzsche rage and Bernard Shaw imagine a vain 
thing. 

Active good-will to all. This is the "altruism/' of 
which Comte and all whom he has influenced have 
had so much to say. But Paul long anticipated Comte, 
when he said, "Let every man look not upon his 
own things, but also upon the things of others." And 
Jesus was before Paul, declaring, as the highest ideal 
of men in their social relations, "Whatsoever things 
ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even 
so unto them. ,, The ideal of brotherhood is not merely 
to abstain from doing evil to men, but actively to do 
them good. And the Gospel of Jesus inflexibly main- 
tains this as the practical side of religion, without 
which no piety is of least avail. "For if a man love 
not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love 
God whom he hath not seen?" The principle is as 
sweeping as it obviously is true. And here is one 
application of it that every man should heed: If a 
man does not realize, abominate, repent and forsake 
his sins against his brother whom he has seen, how 
can he have any genuine realization of sin against a 
God whom he has not seen; and how can he repent 
sin unrealized? 



IV 



But why call this a new Gospel? Has not this al- 
ways been understood to be the teaching of Jesus, 
and has it not always been preached? The words 
have indeed been declared, but the declaration has 



26 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

been accompanied by explanations and exceptions 
that have practically evacuated them of all meaning. 
There has been formal profession of belief in the 
teachings of Jesus, while Christians have shown by 
their conduct that they have never understood his 
precepts, and so far as they have understood have 
made but the feeblest attempt to obey them. The new 
idea of the Gospel is to press home the duty of full 
obedience. 

For Jesus shows plainly in his kingdom teaching 
that he did not have in mind merely or chiefly the 
salvation of individuals, but a social ideal. He com- 
prehended, as his followers have not comprehended 
until lately, that salvation of the individual is all 
but impossible, so long as he is dealt with merely as 
an individual; and that a Gospel that deals with men 
as individuals accomplishes only a partial salvation. 
The Christianity of Jesus, with its fundamental con- 
ception of a Heavenly Father, and all men brothers 
in his great family, is a social religion. The Christian- 
ity that has prevailed for centuries, enthroning a Sov- 
ereign in the heavens, who rules according to law, 
imposes penalties for disobedience and deals with men 
as individual violators of law, is a religion not only 
quite different from that of Jesus, but utterly incom- 
patible with his. 

And Jesus understood, just as we are coming to 
understand, that his idea of universal brotherhood, 
wherever it operates and just so far as it operates, 
effects the transformation of human relations, and 
therefore of social institutions. As men progress in 



THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 2.J 

goodness, that is, in likeness to God, the desire to 
sacrifice self for others will take larger place in their 
lives, selfishness will be driven out, and those social 
institutions that rest on selfishness will give place to 
relations that rest on unselfish love and are inspired 
by mutual good- will. The Gospel of Jesus declares 
in no uncertain sound that, until a man begins to show 
this divine spirit in his daily life, he does not know 
the meaning of salvation. And to say that the honest 
acceptance of this Gospel by the professed followers 
of Jesus would transform society is not speaking 
lightly or unadvisedly. "It is useless to nurse any 
illusions," says Pouget; "the day when it would be 
tried to introduce into social relations, in all their 
strata, a strict honesty and a scrupulous good will, 
nothing would remain standing — neither industry nor 
commerce nor finance — absolutely nothing." * The 
bona fide application of the Golden Rule for a week 
by everybody would so change the world that it would 
be simply unrecognizable. But we do not live under 
the Golden Rule; we live under the rule of gold. 

The current Christianity is not consistent even in its 
individualism. The Gospel of Jesus has much to 
teach it regarding the worth of the individual man, 
and thereby takes issue anew with modern industrial- 
ism and certain dachshund 2 economists. "How much 
then is a man of more value than a sheep," said Jesus. 

'"Sabotage," p. 87. 

2 The dachshund has been described as "a dog-and-a-half long 
and half-a-dog high," which irresistibly suggests those econo- 
mists whose extent of knowledge about things material so mark- 
edly exceeds their moral height. 



28 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

But the modern capitalist knows better ; he says, "How 
much then is a man of less value than a mule," and 
in his mines he takes good care of his mules, while 
he is reckless of human lives. The Gospel of uni- 
versal brotherhood is the only demulcent for such 
social brutalities. 

What does the regeneration of society mean? is one 
of the most frequent questions from those who lend 
incredulous ears to the new Gospel. The very putting 
of the question shows that beneath it lies an utter 
incomprehension of what society is. Society is not 
an aggregation of atoms, a heap of human sand, so 
to speak. When the student of social phenomena has 
counted all the separate facts and events about men 
he has not accounted for society; just as the human 
body is something more than an assemblage of arms, 
legs, eyes and other organs, and that something is 
life. Regeneration of society means therefore a 
transformation of life, a complete change; it means 
that a new spirit must take possession of the social 
group, so that it will of necessity live a new life. 
Society implies institutions, and those institutions ex- 
press an idea. What is the all-prevailing idea of 
present social institutions? Selfishness. What would 
be the idea prevailing throughout a truly Christian soci- 
ety? Love, brotherhood, service. This is what is 
meant by social regeneration. The regeneration of 
individuals will never produce the regeneration of so- 
ciety, until these regenerated individuals pour their 
regenerate life into social institutions and transform 
them. This they have never attempted to do, have 



THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 29 

never dreamed of doing, have never considered possi- 
ble, until very recently. And even now it is an ideal 
vehemently opposed by the Christianity that lives in 
the past. Father Vaughn says, "Socialism makes for 
a Paradise beneath the moon, Christianity leads to a 
Heaven beyond the stars." * But the Gospel of Jesus 
regards these aims, not as antithetical, but as comple- 
mentary. The true disciple of Jesus chooses both: 
with the socialist he strives to make this world a Para- 
dise beneath the moon, while with the Catholic he 
also hopes for the Heaven beyond the stars. 

A new Gospel — yes, but it might quite as truly be 
called the old Gospel, which, after long eclipse, is 
again beginning to be proclaimed with power. It is 
true that what has been called a gospel has always 
been proclaimed; for ages the great effort of those 
who called themselves Christians has been to win the 
rest of the world to their Christianity. And we are 
still told by many that to continue this effort will 
prove not only a better but a quicker solution of all 
social problems and a more effectual redress of all 
social wrongs than direct effort at social reform. It 
is one of those cases in which a flank movement is 
more effective than a frontal attack. But reflection 
brings doubts. We recall that this method has now 
been tried for nineteen centuries and our social prob- 
lems are little affected. The world might be filled 
with such Christians as we have to-day — speaking of 
them "by and large" and admitting a notable minority 
of whom this is not true — with very slight result to 
1 "Socialism from a Christian Standpoint," p. 236. 



30 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

social evils. For our present-day Christians are little 
instructed in the social teachings of Jesus and in con- 
sequence make no appreciable attempt to apply his 
teachings to social facts. The multiplication of such 
Christians to any conceivable extent would only re- 
sult in adding to the present socially ineffective 
churches an indefinite mass of useless, amorphous 
piety. 

The Church does not make a successful appeal to 
many high-minded people to-day, because it has be- 
come an object of service, not a means of rendering 
service. Instead of seeking first the kingdom of God, 
it has sought first its own extension, wealth and 
power. Its energies are absorbed in holding meetings 
and raising money. The Church that spends all its 
energies in merely keeping alive is already virtually 
dead. The people who are estranged from the Church 
have become estranged because they are ethically in 
advance of the Church. The Gospel of Jesus is mainly 
believed, preached and lived by those outside of the 
churches. Within the churches there is a vast quan- 
tity of piety, but very little of the religion that Jesus 
taught. A gospel is believed and proclaimed by the 
churches, and passably lived, but it is not the Gospel 
of Jesus. 

What has for ages been proclaimed as gospel, and 
is still heard from the great majority of Christian 
pulpits, is that salvation consists in man's release from 
a legal penalty. Man has violated the just law of a 
holy God, and in consequence the wrath of God rests 
on him, entailing suffering in this world and endless 



THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 3 1 

misery in the life to come. God sent his Son to 
pay this penalty, which he did in his death on the 
cross; and those who believe in him, and those only, 
are delivered from the penalty that he has borne in 
their behalf. It is not the preachers alone who thus 
conceive the gospel; the laymen wish this sort of thing, 
and only this, to be preached to them. Ministers are 
more open to new ideas about religion than laymen. 
The mental spissitude of the average business man 
makes it almost impossible for him to adjust himself 
to a new religious idea or a new method. The minds 
of such men become muscle bound, so to speak; their 
wits get "charley horse. " 

Not long ago a distinguished layman, addressing a 
great denominational gathering, made a plea for the 
preaching of what he called "the pure and simple 
gospel." And he defined his meaning in words 
quoted from an orthodox preacher : "We should con- 
stantly hold up Sinai and Calvary to mankind. The 
vicarious atonement should be emphasized. The sac- 
rifice of Christ should be presented daily. His deity 
and mediatorial work should be constantly kept be- 
fore the people. The whole gospel and nothing but 
the gospel should be preached." Would it be possible 
in the same space to state anything more widely dif- 
fering from the Gospel that Jesus proclaimed? It 
might be daring to say that Jesus knew nothing of 
such a gospel, but he certainly proclaimed something 
absolutely foreign to this, if the New Testament re- 
ports him truly. It follows then that, if Jesus knew 



32 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

what his Gospel is, the modern preacher does not 
know. 



A new Gospel we must have, and we are beginning 
to hear it. It is nothing else than proclamation of 
the message of Jesus, "The Kingdom of God is at 
hand." This is assertion of the possibility of a 
transformed society, in which every department of 
man's activity — politics, science, art, education, busi- 
ness, no less than religion — shall be inspired and con- 
trolled by the ethics of Jesus. The Master did not 
summon his disciples to prepare themselves for an- 
other world, but to remake this world. For nineteen 
centuries those who have borne the name of Christ 
have, with few exceptions, misread his message and 
consequently have neglected their duty. The new 
social awakening that is the most characteristic thing 
about our generation has led naturally and inevitably 
to an awakening of the Church, new understanding 
of the Gospel, and will lead to new alignment of all 
Christian forces. 

This is evident in the new idea that is coming to 
be entertained of the mission of Christianity and the 
function of the Church. "Missions" a generation ago 
meant exclusively the giving of the gospel to the 
heathen, and the heathen were attractive to most 
Christians in inverse ratio to their nearness. The 
Church is more missionary than ever to-day, but it 
has a larger conception of its mission. Despite all 



THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 33 

satire, Boorrioboola-Gha is still an object of Christian 
effort and a subject of Christian hope, but not to the 
exclusion of the heathen around the corner. And it 
is becoming clearer every day that the chief obstacle 
to all Christian propaganda, at home or abroad, is the 
sinister fact that Christians do not believe and make 
but feeble attempts to practice the truth that they 
invite others to embrace. The character of the aver- 
age "Christian" in Asia, as the least intelligent hea- 
then easily perceives, is little influenced by Christian 
ideals. And the more intelligent heathen can as eas- 
ily perceive that even the Christian missionaries, while 
free from the vices of others, are but half-hearted in 
their acceptance of the teaching of Jesus. 

The Church has been the greatest witness to human 
brotherhood, but in all the ages what she has testified 
in word she has almost invariably denied in deed. 
She denies to-day. But her eyes are opening; she 
is beginning to see that word and deed must be made 
to correspond and become one witness, and that the 
Church which fails to bear this witness is no Church 
of Jesus Christ. Christian sentiments are not suffi- 
cient; conduct, character corresponding to the ethics 
of Jesus, is what the world needs — conduct and char- 
acter corresponding to the actual teachings of Jesus, 
and not to some conventional standard far removed 
from his teachings. Men are coming to apprehend 
more clearly the great value of the Gospel of Jesus, 
in its conformity to reality, in its essential practicality. 
The defect of our social activities at present is that 
a host of well-intentioned people are engaged, with 



34 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

lavish expenditure of time and energy and money, in 
doing perfectly futile things and even harmful things. 
There are giants to be fought, dragons to be slain, 
captives to be released, as in the brave days of old; 
and the social reformer goes against them with armor 
of pasteboard and sword of lath. So much misdi- 
rected effort is really tragic. It is not enough to 
mean well in this matter of social amelioration. It 
is above all necessary to see clearly and to think 
straight in order to do the right thing. 

It is well for the Church that her awakening has 
come, even if vision is still clouded and effort largely 
wasted. It is her only hope of salvation. A healthy 
and vigorous religion can no more result from the 
conditions of economic restraint and social wrong 
that are the foundation of our American civilization 
than grapes can be gathered from thorns or figs from 
thistles. And what is true of the great institution for 
spiritual culture is equally true of its twin institution 
for the culture of mind, the university. The scholar 
must choose between his cloistered pursuit of pure 
science and social welfare, or lose his hold upon his 
age. The University of Wisconsin has shown all 
schools of higher learning how such institutions must 
hereafter relate themselves to the everyday affairs of 
the entire community. Both the Church and the uni- 
versity must realize that their office is not merely edu- 
cational, or inspirational, but one of practical leader- 
ship. They have been too long content with being 
teachers of the world. It is not denied that they have 
discharged this function well : they have together fur- 



THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 35 

nished the basis of knowledge and experience for 
every forward movement of the race. The ethics 
taught by both have saturated literature and law, 
have determined the policies of nations and have 
shaped social ideals. But they have been content to 
let the actual work of social regeneration be accom- 
plished by other agencies. 

It is quite true, as has been pointed out to weari- 
ness, that the leaders of social reform, with very few 
exceptions, owe their training to Christian Churches 
and schools, and that their work could not be suc- 
cessfully carried on save with Christian aid and in 
Christian atmosphere. But now the Church espe- 
cially is called to do more than train leaders and cre- 
ate an atmosphere: it must do no less than take the 
active leadership in social reform. And the univer- 
sity must keep step. A certain type of Church is 
obsolete: the Church content with orthodoxy and 
careless about the kingdom, the Church that thinks 
right but never acts, the Church that in place of a 
power-house maintains a cold storage plant. Chris- 
tianity means everything to the world or it means 
nothing. We must either practice during the week 
what we pray and sing on Sunday or give over alto- 
gether our Sunday singing and praying. 

This requires of us, of course, greatly enlarged 
conception of the field of Christian activities, a break 
with conventional ideas that is schocking to not a 
few excellent Christian people. But to be shocked 
is not infrequently good for people, it is often in- 
dispensable stimulus. We need a new religious ter- 



36 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

minology, and while this is making we must contrive 
as best we may to put a new content into the old 
words. To use the religious vocabulary of our 
grandfathers, from which all real meaning has evap- 
orated, is cant. We must vitalize words again or 
drop them. In the old days the convert was re- 
quired to "renounce the devil and all his works." 
The requirement may remain, but we must get a new 
conception of the devil's "works." While the Church 
slept he has captured the world of business, and has 
fashioned it into a fine specimen of his handicraft. 
The twentieth-century Christian must not merely "re- 
nounce" this work, he must actively combat it. The 
Church has always required Christians to separate 
themselves from the "world" — some Churches have 
been more urgent than others about this, but all have 
made it at least a nominal requirement — but the 
twentieth-century Christian must see that the "world" 
is something more and something more deadly than 
fine dress, jewels and a few tabooed amusements. 
Our "world" is organized evil, and Christians are 
so far from having renounced that, that most of 
them are busily engaged at this moment in extending 
and completing this evil organization. 

And so we need a new definition of "sin"; we 
must put into this dead word a new living content 
that corresponds to present fact. In the past this 
word has suggested almost exclusively the relations 
of men to God. It is now imperatively necessary 
that we think more of our relations to our fellows 
and the ways in which we are all sinning together. 



THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 37 

There is crying need of deeper realization on the 
part of "good" people of those social sins that are 
more heinous than any individual transgressions, and 
more earnest seeking after that social righteousness 
which is the thing just now most urgently demanded 
among us. The chief obstacle to immediate social 
progress is the satisfaction of "good" people with 
the old individualistic standards of goodness, and 
their refusal to see that such a type of goodness is 
now hardly distinguishable from badness. And yet 
we have the word of Jesus himself for it, that to 
keep one's own skirts clean and pass by on the other 
side is highly culpable. We need a new "conviction 
of sin," not less acute than the older type, and far 
more practical. It is the sins that men commit in 
their corporate associations, as citizens and as men of 
business, and in the innumerable and all-influential 
social relations, such as were unknown to past ages, 
that are to-day most lethal and that call loudest for 
repentance. The Church has long had a list of seven 
deadly sins; we need a new list for our time, and 
it would run somewhat like this : exploitation, profit, 
special privilege, graft, parasitism, waste, inefficiency. 
And we have great need to join in the Litany, "From 
these and all other like sins against our kind, good 
Lord, deliver us." 

With this new idea of sin as socialized transgres- 
sion will go of necessity a new idea of deliverance 
from sin, or salvation. It will not be deliverance 
from penalty, not merely transformation of character, 
but radically different social conduct. This will in- 



38 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

volve a new standard of conversion. A man who 
professes that he has become a Christian must be 
expected to do something more than relate an "ex- 
perience' ' that indicates his coming into new relations 
with God. We have assumed, in defiance of our 
experience, that when a man gets right with God 
(or thinks he has) he will as a consequence get right 
with his fellow-men. As matter of fact, we have no 
means of knowing whether a convert has got right 
with God, but we do know beyond a peradventure 
that most converts have never got right with their 
fellows. The good, pious Christian people who fill 
our churches every Sunday are, for the most part, 
utterly indifferent about their relations to their fel- 
lows. It is not their fault. They have all their 
lives been taught that "sin" is sin against God, and 
that the remedy for sin is to seek pardon of God, 
and this once obtained the sin is washed away. They 
have no idea of social sins. 

Is it not, then, too evident to require argument 
that we sorely need conversions that will change men's 
entire social relations and activities? Homely coun- 
try people used to say of a stingy church member 
that "when he was baptized he left his pocketbook at 
home." The ledger of the modern business man has 
not yet been baptized. More than any other conver- 
sion to-day is demanded conversion of the factory, 
the counting-room and the bank. Greed for gain, 
and lack of scruple as to means, have together made 
of the world of affairs an Inferno surpassing the 
highest flights of Dante's imagination. Honored 



THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 39 

Christian philanthropists get their money for the en- 
dowment of universities and charities from the blood 
and bones of their brothers; lovely and cultured 
Christian women derive the incomes on which their 
womanhood is nourished from the tears and groans 
of their sisters, and from the forced labor of little 
children. Monstrous! incredible! chorus the "good" 
Christian people. A writer is most culpable to spread 
such slanders! And just there is the most hopeless 
feature of the social situation: the "good" people 
will not believe the facts, will not listen to them if 
they can help it, shut eyes and ears and will not be 
informed about our social problems. Their cry is, 
"Preach the simple Gospel." 

But this is the simple Gospel. This is the Gospel 
of Jesus. Nobody can seriously study His words 
and have the least doubt about it. The Christian 
preacher may still determine, as Paul did at Corinth, 
not to know anything among men save Jesus Christ, 
and him crucified. But the social Gospel gives new 
significance to the cross. The "preaching of the 
cross" has too often meant the preaching of some 
mechanical doctrine of the atonement, and such 
preaching has lost whatever power it may once have 
had. The cross, as Jesus and Paul proclaimed it, 
means self-immolation. The cross saves no man until 
he has himself been nailed to it. Not till we have 
learned from Jesus the secret of sacrificial love, and 
have ourselves practiced it, has the cross any meaning 
or efficacy for us. Vicarious sacrifice is sacrifice of 
ourselves for others, and only so does Christ's sacri- 



40 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

fice in our behalf become operative. It has been 
well said : "It is the uncrucified Christianity that 
speaks in the modern pulpit and sits in the church 
pew that is driving the passion for humanity into 
other channels than the Church." 

Our enlarged idea of salvation is leading us to 
comprehend that no deliverance of men can be per- 
manent that does not include a saved environment. 
The physician who should cure a man of typhoid and 
then advise or permit him to adopt a diet of typhoid 
germs would be regarded as insane, even though one 
who has had typhoid is presumed to be immune to 
a second attack. The percentage of those who are 
not immune is large enough to prohibit such a risk. 
But we turn our "saved" people back to their old 
environment and expect the new life to survive. Even 
those Christians who have been fortunate enough al- 
ways to have an environment favorable to all the 
virtues often confess that the maintenance of a Chris- 
tian character is not too easy a task. But many who 
are rescued in an environment in which there is 
only incitement to evil, without being taken out of 
the environment, after a little time of desperate 
struggle go under again. We cannot accept as our 
ideal anything less than a saved soul in a saved body 
living in a saved community. Short of that we have 
an incomplete and uncertain deliverance, with no 
promise of permanence. The old method of hand- 
picked-fruit evangelism no longer meets modern so- 
cial conditions and needs. To get a man to profess 
himself saved, and then turn him loose in the com- 



THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 41 

munity with a "God bless you, brother," is not mak- 
ing headway against the powers of evil. It need not 
be abandoned by those who are wedded to it, but it 
must be supplemented by those who are more awake 
to modern conditions and modern needs. To hasten 
the coming of the kingdom and promote the uplift 
of mankind is a man's job; it is the biggest game that 
men of brains and brawn can play. The smallest 
game in the world is the money game. 

This awakening of the Church will bring us a new 
ethic. We have had ethics made by the rich for 
the poor, by the strong for the weak; we are on the 
way toward ethics for all. "Thou shalt love thy 
neighbor as thyself" has been hitherto interpreted 
as a precept to govern individuals in their mutual 
conduct; we are learning to give it a social inter- 
pretation. The result of the old individualism has 
proved to be that men believe they are keeping Christ's 
words while they are gigantic sinners in their social 
deeds. There are men among us not a few, rich 
beyond the dreams of avarice, who are full of the 
milk of human kindness toward poor John Doe, and 
will do almost anything to help the individual sufferer 
from disease or poverty, who have yet done more 
than any thousand men of any other generation to 
make men poor and keep men poor. As theirs is a 
socialized sin against the neighbor, there must be a 
socialized love of neighbor before the precept of Jesus 
can be obeyed. Many a man still unctuously repeats, 
"The wages of sin is death," thinking meanwhile of 
his brother's drunkenness or lechery or lying or thiev- 



42 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

ery, but never for a moment giving thought to his 
own rapacity and greed, the sins whose wages are 
paid in the death- of those whom he daily crushes 
into deeper poverty and woe. 

The old ethics borrowed its favorite ideas from 
monarchy and aristocracy. Men were exhorted to 
be content "in the sphere where God had placed 
them." But we now understand that "spheres" are 
man-made, not God-ordained, and they are passing 
away. These ideas of conduct we are replacing by 
ethics founded on human brotherhood, which again 
rests on a common divine sonship. And so, com- 
mands like "Thou shalt not kill" are seen to have 
been inadequately understood. "Thou shalt not steal" 
applies to those who possess, as well as to those who 
take, property. The stealing of capitalism must be 
recognized, repented and renounced. The murder of 
war and industrialism must be made as repulsive to 
the conscience as individual homicide. We now send 
the murderer of one to the gallows, or the electric 
chair; we enroll the killer of hundreds among our 
"best citizens"; while the slayer of thousands we 
exalt to the presidency. 

Many deprecate the present interest in social re- 
ligion ; they fear that it is a dangerous tendency. The 
function of the Church, they remind us, may be com- 
pared to an electric dynamo: it is the function of 
generating moral and spiritual energy. If the Church 
takes the lead in social reforms, it must choose be- 
tween political programs, and eventually it will be 
drawn into that entangling alliance with the State 



THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 43 

from which it has only lately been freed after ages 
of struggle. But the risk must be run, if there 
really is a risk, for a dynamo is a useless thing until 
it has been connected up to machinery by which its 
power may be utilized in doing some of the world's 
work. The Church has too long been an unconnected 
dynamo; it has generated vast quantities of power 
that has never been utilized for the improvement of 
society; its problem now is to get its power turned 
on to the social machinery. 

This is only to say in other words that the Church 
has been too blind to see fact and truth, too slow to 
take up the work to which its divine Founder called 
it; and the work of social regeneration has been 
undertaken, and thus far has been carried forward, 
in independence of the Church, and to an increasing 
degree by men in scant sympathy with the Church. 
If this purblind policy continues, if the Church is 
to be ruled by stupid conservatism, men who desire 
the progress of humanity, and feel called of God to 
devote their lives to that purpose, will have to forsake 
their Church though not their religion. Conserva- 
tism, in the present condition of society, says Pro- 
fessor Ross, is "like setting the brake on a loaded 
wagon being hauled up the bare western slope of a 
sandy hill on a July afternoon." * If we do anything 
we shall doubtless make some mistakes, but if we 
do nothing we shall die in our sins. Society is an 
organism and to reform it is an operation in surgery; 
diseased tissue must be removed and nature must 

^'Sin and Society," p. 85. 



44 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

be encouraged to make healthy tissue in its place. 
Has the organism vitality enough to survive the opera- 
tion, or will it die on the operating-table from shock 
and loss of blood? Only the event can answer, but 
if the patient may die of the operation he certainly 
will die without it — the knife is the only hope. 

Christianity has been and is the religion of the 
possessing class. Christian teachers teach capitalistic 
ethics as an inseparable part of their religion. Capital- 
ism has long used Christianity as a means of con- 
trolling the workers, by making them satisfied with 
their lot. Nobody who knows the facts ought to 
be surprised at the bitterness of the reaction against 
Christianity among the workers of the world. The 
changed, or at least changing, attitude of Christians 
will in time produce its due effect and make possible 
a better understanding between the Church and the 
workers. The real affinity between the Gospel of 
Jesus and the advanced social propaganda forbids 
that the two great forces for the amelioration of 
society should be permanently opposed to each other. 

For a generation now the Church has made no 
appreciable numerical advance, though it has poured 
out money like water and spent effort more freely 
than in any previous generation of its history. In 
1880 there were twenty members of churches in 
every hundred of the population; in 1910 there were 
only twenty- four; and during the decade just past 
the population and the church membership both in- 
creased twenty-one per cent. The Church is just 
holding its own; it is marking time, not marching to 



THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 45 

conquest. Only one conclusion is possible : the Church 
has ceased to meet the wants of the age. It makes 
no successful appeal to the people at large. It must 
change its policy radically or lose even more in the 
coming decades of the century. The Church that 
busies itself with the things that former generations 
thought so important — questions of polities and sacra- 
ments and liturgies and creeds — while great move- 
ments in reform of social institutions and redressing 
of social wrongs are calling on it for leadership, 
the Church that with face toward the past stands 
discussing ancient questions of theology while weighty 
ethical and spiritual problems press for an answer, 
will soon be buried along with that past to which it 
clings with obstinacy so blind. 

The future progress of the Church depends largely, 
perhaps mainly, on the ability and readiness of the 
ministry to read these signs of the times and become 
wise and progressive leaders. Hitherto, the average 
minister has been too busy teaching others their duty 
to learn anything about his own. Hence the greater 
part of the clergy are still blind leaders of the blind. 
The crying need of the ministry is a larger measure 
of the spirit of Jesus, the spirit of unselfishness, the 
willingness to jeopard personal interests for the com- 
mon good. The charge of insincerity so often made 
against the clergy is, however, absurd to one who has 
any wide acquaintance with ministers. It is not 
merely unjust, it is foolish. Precisely because the 
clergy are so sincere, the case of so many of them 
seems hopeless; their desperate sincerity in holding 



46 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

fast to the old prevents them from learning anything 
new. 

The most distressing element of the situation is 
the lack of sympathy with the workers that is evi- 
dent among the clergy. With exceptions few and 
rare, they may always be counted on to side with 
the exploiting class. In the strike of the silk workers 
in Paterson, New Jersey, in the summer of 19 13, 
the ministers of that city were arrayed in solid pha- 
lanx on the side of the employers. Not one voice 
was raised in behalf of the workers. Not even was 
a protest made against the anarchic lawlessness of 
police and local courts. And this is typical; it hap- 
pens whenever and wherever there is a clash between 
labor and capital. This attitude of the clergy can be 
explained only on the ground of their economic de- 
pendence upon the privileged classes. They are the 
hirelings of capitalism, and, to do them justice, they 
earn their wages. As a plain business proposition, 
the Christian churches of America could not be 
maintained to-day without the gifts of men who are 
daily exploiting their brothers. In fact, they are so 
maintained. Is it necessary to go further for an 
explanation of the attitude of the clergy, or for the 
attitude of the workers? Are we astonished that 
there is a widening gap between the workers and the 
Church? Surprise does small credit to our intelli- 
gence. The workers cannot be rationally expected 
to love such a Church, to believe in it, to attend its 
services and make sacrifices for its support. Will the 
Church continue to be such? 



THE GOSPEL AND THE AWAKENING CHURCH 47 

It is evident that much remains to be done before 
the waking Church becomes the awakened Church. 
A long process of education will be required before 
the enlarged conception of the kingdom, the Gospel 
and Christian ethics is generally accepted. But there 
is nothing to do save to press the good work of 
awakening and enlightenment, until all the preachers 
are converted to Christianity and all the churches to 
religion. 



CHAPTER II 

THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL JUSTICE 



Authentic history goes back about five thousand 
years. We have had fifty centuries of agriculture, 
and men are still starving ; thousands are to-day shiver- 
ing with cold, after fifty centuries of manufacturing; 
for fifty centuries we have been building, and have 
not yet learned to house all our people. There may 
have been a time when these things were unavoidable : 
the combined industry of the race did not produce 
enough to feed, clothe and house everybody, and 
somebody had to come short of enough. But within 
a century the introduction of machinery has changed 
all that; enough is now produced to support in com- 
fort every member of the race. We have conquered 
nature, but we have not conquered poverty. 

Because it is a comparatively new country, with 
a sparse population, yet possessing immense resources, 
America should not yet have felt the social problems 
of the Old World. The continent of Europe, with 
an area exceeding that of the United States by less 
than 200,000 square miles, has a population of 
400,000,000, who must be sustained from incompar- 
ably smaller resources. Think of China, with its 400,- 
000,000 or more, wresting a living from an area 

48 



THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL JUSTICE 49 

less than half the size of the United States. 1 For a 
long time to come we should have been free from 
the economic pressure that in fact we feel so keenly. 
No nation faces social distress in more acute form, 
or is more acutely conscious of its social problems. 
Why? Our colossal American fortunes, the greatest 
in the world, are the answer. The vast wealth of 
America has been "cornered" by a few men, and 
profits the great majority not a whit. Our poor are 
as poor as the poorest of Europe. 

It was hoped and believed for generations, and was 
the proud boast of Americans, that our democracy 
would prevent the inequalities of fortune that aris- 
tocracy has produced and established in Europe. Per- 
haps it would, if we really had a democracy. Our 
pride in America as the world's leader in democracy 
has had a sad fall, as we have slowly come to per- 
ceive that the hard facts are irreconcilable with our 
bookish theories. America the leader of the nations 
in democracy? It is falling far behind those nations 
that we have so long sneered at as "effete." Our 
working class is treated with a brutality that finds 
no parallel in any other great capitalist country. 

The reason is not far to seek. For two generations 
the men of greatest physical vigor and mental power 
in America have sought a career, not in politics but 
in business. The unexampled rapidity of our ma- 

1 According to the "Statesman's Year-Book," the area of China 
proper is 1,532,420 square miles, and the estimated population 
407,253,000. The area of the United States (not including terri- 
tories) is 3,616,484 square miles, population 91,972,267. 



50 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

terial development, without precedent or parallel in 
the entire history of the world, has stimulated to a 
degree hitherto undreamt the passion for gain. The 
possibility that the poorest boy might die the richest 
man of his generation, actually realized in Rock- 
efeller and Carnegie, has stimulated to the utmost 
the normal desire to get on, and turned it into an 
insane frenzy for wealth. Politics have ceased to 
be politics, and have become business, usually a very 
sordid and disgraceful business. Neither justice nor 
intelligence inspires our legislation, but desire for 
greater wealth; and all our law-making bodies have 
fallen under the control of the forces that make for 
wealth. Administrative and judicial departments of 
government have followed the same course, and cor- 
ruption honeycombs every part of the conduct of 
public affairs. Hitherto, as Professor Zueblin well 
says, "The American public has betrayed its price, 
as unmistakably as a cheap grafting politician; the 
price is prosperity, which, unaccompanied by justice, 
makes a nation of grafters." * Our workingmen have 
for many years been exhorted to vote, not for a 
principle or for rights, but for "a full dinner pail," 
and the greater number of them have justified the 
estimate of their character held by the cheap poli- 
ticians who devised the slogan. 

"Triumphant democracy" is no longer the synonym 
of the United States. The oppressed peoples of the 
Old World once looked to us for ideals, instruction 
and inspiring example. And so, in our complacency, 

1 "Democracy and the Overman," p. 70. 



THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL JUSTICE 5 1 

we went to sleep, and the world has run by us. The 
old fable of the hare and the tortoise has a new 
illustration at our expense. "Free and enlightened" 
America is the slowest country in the world to re- 
spond to the reform sentiment, the slowest country 
to do justice to the workers. England repealed her 
conspiracy laws against workingmen in 1825, but in 
1836 the Supreme Court of New York declared trades 
unions illegal; and it was not until 1884 that Mary- 
land repealed her conspiracy laws — the last State in 
the Union to do so. The secret of our discomfiture 
lies in the fact that we have understood democracy 
to be concerned with political institutions only, and 
to imply merely that all men should have the equal 
power expressed by a vote. We have been the slow- 
est of civilized peoples to learn that real democracy 
means the equal sharing of all men in the gifts of 
nature, the product of labor and the opportunities 
of development. Democracy means adequate life 
for all. 

On the whole, there has been steady progress in 
all quarters of the globe, through several generations, 
not to say through all the centuries, toward political 
democracy. A survey of the field of history shows 
despotism yielding to oligarchy, oligarchy giving place 
to aristocracy, aristocracy gradually transformed into 
democracy. But while this has been true of insti- 
tutions, in life there has been no such progress. As 
truly as five thousand years ago, everywhere on earth 
the millions toil that the thousands may enjoy. One 
who, in these conditions, permits himself to wax elo- 



52 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

quent over ' 'democracy," "equal rights," "justice, 
"freedom" and the like is become as sounding brass 
and a tinkling cymbal. This may shock those who 
are still living in the paleolithic age, it may even cause 
them acute pain, but that cannot be helped. The 
easy, safe, normal way is to repeat what others say, 
especially what the majority say. Some men get 
quite a reputation for wisdom by just doing that all 
their lives. One cannot contradict the majority and 
expect to be enrolled among the Seven Sages of 
America. 

In spite of the industrious efforts of our rulers 
to create a contrary impression, hard and disagreeable 
fact compels the conclusion that we have under the 
forms of democracy a country ruled by an aristoc- 
racy, based on industrial wealth. The old aristocracy, 
founded on the possession of land, acknowledged du- 
ties to the land and did much to help elevate their ten- 
antry. The new aristocracy of wealth acknowledges 
duties to nobody. "Is it not lawful for me to do what 
I will with mine own?" is its motto. It is the most 
tyrannous, the most cruel and the most ignorant aris- 
tocracy the world ever saw. 1 This aristocracy of 
wealth can be displaced only by a democracy of mind. 
The few will always win while the many are ignorant, 
and he who would see the triumph of democracy must 
do his utmost to promote knowledge. None are fit to 

1 "I never could believe that Providence had sent a few men 
into the world, ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions 
ready saddled and bridled to be ridden." — Richard Rumbold, 
1685. No wonder they hanged him! 



THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL JUSTICE 53 

govern but the wise and good, and a democracy of the 
foolish and evil of all possible governments would be 
the worst. The hope of democracy lies in the capacity 
of all men to grow in goodness and wisdom. He who 
does not believe in such capacity has faith neither in 
God nor in man. 

Jesus is the loftiest prophet of true democracy. A 
democracy that is no more than an enlightened animal- 
ism is not a worthy goal of effort, even if it be a pos- 
sible achievement. Jesus saw this, and therefore he 
said, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and its right- 
eousness." If the sayings of Jesus about the king- 
dom are not profoundest wisdom, they are most arrant 
nonsense. Only an ethical democracy can be a trium- 
phant democracy. That is why "Thou shalt love thy 
neighbor as thyself" sums up the whole duty of man 
to man. The decisive reason why one should love his 
neighbor and seek his good is that no man can hate 
his neighbor and do him injury without also injuring 
himself. Selfishness is a boomerang. Service of our 
fellows is the only way to benefit ourselves. This is 
a plain, hard, business proposition, founded on experi- 
ence of life. It happens also to be morals and re- 
ligion. 

This prevailing condition among us of real aristoc- 
racy with nominal democracy, of practical monopoly 
with theoretical freedom of competition, of hopeless 
slavery for the many while we hypocritically pretend 
that there is hope of advancement for all, is the deadly 
foe of human liberty and indicts our civilization as a 
failure. Every court, every crime, every prison is a 



54 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

proof of failure; every saloon, every prostitute upon 
our streets, every asylum and hospital helps to roll up 
the vast total of evidence against the present order 
of things; every debt, every defalcation, every bank- 
ruptcy, every law-suit accumulates testimony to the 
failure of our civilization. For the end of civilization 
is the peace, harmony, happiness and moral uplift of 
humanity. 

The great underlying evil of society as now or- 
ganized, stated in terms of politics or government, is 
that it vests public functions in private hands — in 
hands irresponsible. The power of taxation is funda- 
mental in government, and taxation is justifiable only 
on the ground of the public good. Every dollar taken 
from a citizen that is not used for the public good 
is robbery. Individual monopoly puts into irresponsi- 
ble hands power to tax for private gain, which is 
nothing less than stealing under form of law. The 
price the monopolist can charge is limited only by 
"what the traffic will bear." At a certain point, which 
can be determined only by experiment, increase of 
price will mean diminution of profit; and for his own 
sake the monopolist will stop there, or return to that 
point if he has inadvertently exceeded it. When he 
compares what he has actually done with what he has 
power to do, no doubt the monopolist is often aston- 
ished at his own moderation. 

The history of governments and peoples discloses 
many instances of the operation of a general law of 
social development. There is first necessary a cen- 
tralization of power, to bring order out of chaos, and 



THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL JUSTICE 55 

provide the protection and cooperation that are the 
basic conditions of social progress. For a time this 
centralized power is beneficent in the main, then it be- 
comes intolerable, and a struggle begins for decentrali- 
zation and distribution of power. With the political 
applications of this law all educated people are fa- 
miliar; the text-books of our school days began our 
enlightenment, and subsequent reading and observation 
have completed it. We are now coming to compre- 
hend that this law applies to economics as well as to 
politics, to the world of industry and commerce 
equally with the domain of government. For a cen- 
tury or two a process of centralization of industrial 
wealth and social power has been going on, and the 
last generation has seen it rapidly accelerated. We 
see its fruits, we experience its intolerable evils, as 
our ancestors experienced the evils of political des- 
potism. It has become plain to us that the time has 
come for decentralization and distribution of indus- 
trial power among the whole people, if democracy is 
to be realized and further progress in civilization is 
to be possible. America may be still corrupt, but 
she is no longer corrupt and contented. 



II 



Our ship of State is about to sail uncharted seas. 
We modern Jasons have begun a quest for something 
more precious, as well as more difficult of attainment, 
than the Golden Fleece : we are in search of social 



56 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

justice. There must be something wrong in our social 
arrangements; no rational man can doubt it. Why 
have we these extremes of wealth and poverty that 
we cannot lift our eyes without seeing? Evidently 
because the best minds of the centuries have not been 
given to the solution of social problems. Men have 
been too intent on producing wealth, securing power 
and promoting knowledge, to take much thought about 
securing social justice. It has been taken for granted 
that, with progress of civilization, social justice would 
come about of itself. But now the best minds are 
awakening to the actual condition of society. A civi- 
lization so defective in social justice as ours is seen 
to be a thing of which we should be ashamed, not 
proud. Henceforth these problems are to receive the 
serious attention of Americans who are leaders of 
thought and enterprise. We feel that we must do 
something to make the conditions of life better for 
those who come after us. For, in spite of the Irish 
orator's famous protest, posterity has done much for 
us, in giving us the greatest of all gifts, an oppor- 
tunity. 

The demand for social justice is not only insistent 
but general. From one end of our land to the other, 
and in every class, there is a growing conviction that 
something is wrong. As a consequence there is also 
a growing resolution that something must and shall 
be done about it. We are an aroused, a determined, 
almost an angry people, as yet doubting just what to 
do. This period of doubt will not long endure. Now 
is the psychological moment to make changes in our 



THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL JUSTICE 57 

system with least trouble, radical enough to avert revo- 
lution, before revolutionary methods are demanded 
and adopted. 

Analysis of this discontent will convince any in- 
quirer that its source is violation by our social order 
of two fundamental principles of human life. The 
first of these is, that the soil, the sole source of the 
means of life and the physical basis of liberty and 
happiness, is the common property of the race. This 
fundamental human right society denies. The earth 
is the Lord's, say the Scriptures ; the earth is the land- 
lord's, say our laws. God gave the earth to man for 
use, to all men equally, again say the Scriptures ; but a 
few men have stolen the earth from their fellows and 
claim it as their private possession. This is the first 
great injustice, and the second is like unto it : the 
sole means by which wealth may be obtained from the 
soil is labor, which is the common lot of the race. This 
fundamental human duty society denies ; it permits and 
even encourages spoliation of the hard-working many 
by the idle few. Our laws say that some must work 
while others may live luxuriously from their product. 
For no man can live without work; if he does not 
work for himself, somebody else must work for him. 
But an honest man cannot live on the fruits of an- 
other's toil, unless he is also doing something of use 
to society; he must either be a direct producer of 
wealth, or else a helper of the workers and so an 
indirect producer. If he neither directly nor indi- 
rectly produces, he has no right to existence — he is a 
mere parasite on society. These are the two funda- 



58 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

mental principles of life; they stand every economic, 
ethical and practical test. Their truth cannot be con- 
troverted or evaded. Their denial in practice is the 
source of all our social evils. 

The other day a young man in New York became 
the absolute owner of property said to be worth $70,- 
000,000, which he had done nothing to earn but to 
be the son of his father. His father before him, and 
so on to the fourth generation, had done no more. 
All that this family has had to do is to sit tight and 
let their fellow residents of Manhattan pile up mil- 
lions for them. One scion of the family has shaken 
the dust of America from his feet, and become a 
British subject. Americans are not fit for him to live 
with; they are only fit to pay him an annual tribute 
of many millions, which they continue meekly to do. 
Meanwhile, every week scores of children are born 
in Manhattan with no heritage but poverty and misery. 

This is an extreme case, but so long as the world 
holds one starving child and one millionaire, the mil- 
lionaire is bound to justify his existence. Christians 
cannot believe that their Father in Heaven ever in- 
tended his children to fare so unequally. Atheists and 
agnostics cannot believe that members of the same 
race can equitably be so different in fortune. So long 
as men believed that God sent the plague and cholera, 
and all the other ills that flesh is heir to, they sub- 
mitted with what resignation they could to the divine 
will. But when they learned the nature and causes 
of disease, they ceased to talk about "mysterious dis- 
pensations of Providence" and began a vigorous fight 



THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL JUSTICE 59 

against microbes and mosquitoes. And while men 
believed that God pleased to set some men in high 
station and some in low, that he had given to this 
man wealth and to that poverty, some tried to be con- 
tent in the station to which divine wisdom had as- 
signed them, while those who strove against their lot 
were stigmatized as rebels against God. Now we all 
know that our fellows, not God, have made and main- 
tain human inequality; content has disappeared, and a 
smoldering anger has taken its place, which will burst 
into a flame of revolution if something is not done 
speedily to redress our great social wrongs. 

Even if the continuance of present conditions were 
possible, they would be deadly to the race. Some men 
are so busy in accumulating surplus means of living 
that they forget to live. Others are so occupied with 
attempts to gain the absolutely necessary means of liv- 
ing that they have no chance to live. Only a few live ; 
most men merely exist. It is imperative that this be 
changed. We must have the possibility of life, lib- 
erty, happiness, for all. We want the earth, the whole 
earth, for all men — not to own, but to possess, to use, 
to enjoy. We need not wonder at the resentment of 
those who have learned how they have been robbed 
of their heritage. Machiavelli said that men in gen- 
eral will forgive the murder of their parents more 
easily than the spoliation of their property. The cyn- 
ical remark was founded on a wide observation of 
human nature ; and it helps us to measure the retribu- 
tion that will one day be exacted from the robbers by 
the robbed, if voluntary restitution is not made. 



60 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

Recognition of social wrongs and demand for so- 
cial justice, while general, are by no means universal. 
A very considerable part of society, including some of 
its most influential members, elects the ostrich policy : 
hides its head and refuses to see either present evils 
or the coming storm. Many will recognize nothing 
but an unreasonable dissatisfaction on the part of 
those whose failure to get on is due to their own 
idleness, dissipation and general thriftlessness. Indus- 
try and thrift would solve all social problems; every 
man might gain a competence if he would. Thrift! 
Have those who so confidently commend this remedy 
for social ills ever troubled themselves to think the 
matter through and discover what thrift signifies so- 
cially? Thrift means that if you and I slave and save 
all our lives, our children may be idle with impunity. 
It means that one generation shall be workers and the 
next loafers. Why does not society let one generation 
transmit to the next the right to murder with impu- 
nity? It would be equally logical and quite as ethical. 

The ostrich plan includes not merely the ignoring 
but the denial of patent social facts. "I object to the 
word 'class'; there are no classes in America," said a 
talented and cultivated woman lately in a public in- 
quiry. Could anything be said that would show 
greater blindness to existing facts? We have classes 
as well marked as those of any European country, 
but the distinctions with us depend less on birth, fam- 
ily, gentility. Our classes are purely economic classes ; 
the line of demarcation is one of wealth, or rather of 
income. The late Ward McAllister once expressed 



THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL JUSTICE 6l 

the opinion that about four hundred families consti- 
tuted the "society" of New York. He may have been 
inaccurate in his figures — the exact number is of no 
moment — but he was quite right in principle ; in every 
city and town, down to the smallest village, there are 
certain families, a number larger or smaller according 
to the size and wealth of the place, who constitute 
"society," and their decisions fix the social status of 
every newcomer, whether he shall be in "society" or 
not. Fifty years ago we aped the aristocracies of 
Europe and affected to make birth the chief qualifica- 
tion. The would-be entrant to "society" was asked, 
Who was your grandfather? Of late we have had the 
courage to set up a standard of our own, or, rather, 
to recognize frankly what has always been our real 
standard, and the question now is, What is your in- 
come? Not that the question is asked in quite this 
bald, blunt fashion, but that this is the accepted test 
of social fitness. And below the Four Hundred, in 
which few can maintain themselves who do not pos- 
sess millions, are other groups united on the same 
principle of possessing approximately the same in- 
comes and therefore being able to do the same social 
"stunts." There is, too, a degree of fitness in the 
standard, for self-respecting persons cannot long re- 
main with comfort in a social circle where the finan- 
cial pace is too hot for them — they cannot entertain in 
the style of richer people, and their pride forbids them 
to be continually accepting favors that they cannot 
return. And there we reach the ultimate fact: The 
amount of income finally decides the social question, to 



62 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

what class a man belongs. It is no use to blink the 
fact, and pretend that we have no classes. 



Ill 



The world's workers, who produce the world's 
wealth, are now demanding access to the soil and 
their rightful share of the product of their industry, 
so long withheld from them. If we do not give, it 
will not be long before they take. Theirs is the power 
to take. They have only to realize their strength and 
act together, and all present institutions of the world 
would disappear in a day in one common ruin. It is 
time that the owners of vast wealth realized that they 
hold their property only on the sufferance of those 
who are so cruelly wronged by present social arrange- 
ments, and that sufferance will not last indefinitely. 

It has been estimated, on the basis of the best data 
obtainable, that nine-tenths of the wealth of America 
is owned by one-tenth of the people. What 80,000,- 
000 possess would not make spending-money for the 
other 10,000,000. The estimate is no doubt crude, be- 
cause the data on which it is based are crude. The 
art of collecting and collating social statistics has only 
begun to be practiced; but the error is negligible for 
our purpose. That the estimate is roughly just is 
proved by other available facts. For example: the 
average annual product of the individual worker is 
calculated from the census returns to be $2,400; while 
the average annual wage of the producer is $780. Of 



THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL JUSTICE 6$ 

each worker's product, therefore, $1,600, or more than 
two-thirds, goes to those who have produced nothing. 
The monstrous injustice of this admits of no denial 
or palliation. Still, there are persons who seem to 
reason (let us call it that) that, inasmuch as the cap- 
italistic class is satisfied with what it steals from 
workers, the workers are or should be satisfied with 
what is not stolen from them. If employers are 
happy in their palaces, laborers should be contented 
in their slums. Strangely, the worker no longer ap- 
proves that sort of logic. 

When the laborer goes to the market place to sell 
his labor, he finds that sellers are many and buyers 
few. When he goes to buy food and clothing and 
shelter, he finds that buyers are many and sellers few. 
Hence he gets low wages and pays high prices. 
Reader, how do you appraise the system? Just? hu- 
mane? promotive of human welfare? encouraging to 
civilization? The employer sells his goods, the em- 
ployee sells his life; we have given every protection 
to the former and denied all protection to the latter, 
thus proclaiming to the world our conviction that life 
is of less worth than steel rails or woolen cloth. Are 
we really less brutal and material than our laws? 
Have we done ourselves injustice? How can we pre- 
tend so, while we tolerate a social system in which 
the proletarian swings like a pendulum between a con- 
dition of dependence when times are good and vaga- 
bondage when times are bad ? Work, the opportunity 
to gain a livelihood, is not recognized as his right, 



64 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

but a favor granted by a boss, like a bone thrown to 
a dog. Often there is no bone. Ought not the great 
majority of working men be called rather working 
animals, that they submit one day longer to such a 
system? So long as they get fodder and a stall, they 
manifest a bovine content with their life. Add thereto 
a mate, and it is a difficult thing to awaken their in- 
telligence and rouse them to make an effort to better 
themselves. Deprive them of fodder and stall, and 
they seem unable to do more than bellow and paw 
the ground. 

At least, this has been their history up to now. 
Hitherto the capitalist has been able, if not to satisfy, 
at least to quiet the laborer by paying him a pittance 
and adding a draft on the bank of Heaven. Is it 
strange that the worker has become dissatisfied? He 
does not discover any unseemly eagerness on the part 
of his employer to take his profits in that currency. 
Wall Street quotes no rates on that kind of paper. 
The magnates of High Finance when off duty, so to 
speak, may address Sunday schools and advise their 
hearers to lay up their treasures in Heaven, but in 
business hours what they understand is cent per cent, 
here below. Hope of the life to come is indeed a 
precious possession for the laborer, but it does not 
clothe and feed his family or pay his rent. The 
worker is just human enough to wish for a larger 
proportion of his pay now, and in material things, 
without denying the value of the spiritual. For 
though he has an immortal soul which clamors for its 



THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL JUSTICE 65 

rights, he is just now an immortal soul housed in a 
mortal body, that cries out against hunger and cold 
and nakedness. And the body often cries so insist- 
ently that the cry of the soul is unheard. It was not 
for nothing that the ancients held the bowels to be the 
seat of the affections and will. The hungry man will 
hear the call of his stomach, when the still small voice 
of conscience falls on deaf ears. 

The preachers who insist that man's chief duty is 
to consider the welfare of his soul to the last man 
look wonderfully well after their bodies. Not one of 
them omits his three meals a day for fear of hurting 
his soul. It is ever the well-fed man who piously 
insists that "Man cannot live by bread alone" ; the ill- 
fed man is acutely conscious that without bread man 
cannot live at all. In spite of Mr. Lincoln, it is very 
easy to fool people; it is still easier to fool oneself. 
The preacher has no need to worry about bread, be- 
cause some other man is working to feed him. He 
can keep his hands soft and white, because some other 
man wears callouses and grime for his sake. The 
preacher may deserve his immunity, but the least he 
can do in return for it is to recognize the situation 
and stop talking nonsense to the man whose labor sup- 
plies his bread. 

It is often objected to current proposals for social 
reform that they would really promote greater social 
injustice than they seek to remedy. It is charged that 
social reform practically amounts to taking from one 
man that which is his and giving it to another who 



66 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

has not earned it. 1 It would not be possible to mis- 
understand and misstate the case more completely. 
What is proposed is to take from one man who has 
not earned it property that he merely calls "his" but 
to which he has no moral title, and give it to the men 
who really earned it. The horror that conservative 
people feel — or affect — at such proposals might be not 
a little lessened if they would consider the historic 
origin of present "vested rights." Communal prop- 
erty preceded private; the latter is a comparatively 
recent growth and has progressed chiefly by the usur- 
pations of the strong and aggressive few and the pas- 
sive surrender of the great majority. The ethical 
right of the majority to reverse the process, whenever 
it can and as far as it pleases, will be questioned by 
few who judge human institutions in the light of their 
origin and growth. Thus far the majority propose 
only a slight modification of the system of private 

1 "How are the inequalities in society to be wiped out? How is 
government to insure happiness to the individual? Is it by an 
equal distribution of property? Is it by taking from one man 
that which is his and giving it to another who has not earned 
it? I submit that this is the ultimate result of a thorough anal- 
ysis of all the theories advanced by the Progressive party. It 
is easily seen that under the progressive program the whole 
machinery that has been so carefully built up by the older 
statesmen of this country and of England to save to the indi- 
vidual and the minority, freedom, equality before the law, the 
right of property and the right to pursue happiness, is to be 
taken apart and thrown into a junk heap." Speech of William 
Howard Taft in New York, January 4, 1913. Of this farrago 
of nonsense, the last five words only betray some comprehen- 
sion of fact. The junk heap is where most of the "machinery" 
belongs. 



THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL JUSTICE 67 

property : the claim of the State to the "unearned in- 
crement," the value added to land, not by anything 
that the private owner does, but by the growth of the 
community, is by many conceded to be just. 

Society has a clear ethical right to take for the 
common good value which society alone confers. 
Every form of wealth save land value is produced by 
labor. Every other form of wealth is consumed or 
deteriorates and must be replaced by new labor. Land 
values grow with the growth of population, without 
labor, and continue as long as the population remains, 
and no longer. We speak of "land values," because 
that is the accepted phrase, but land values are not 
properly values : they are merely the landowners' 
power to levy tribute (called rent) upon other forms 
of wealth. The landowner is a parasite : he produces 
no more wealth than any other thief. There was a 
time when the whole of Manhattan Island sold for 
$25 ; now much of it is worth $500 a foot front, some 
of it even more. The difference between the two 
values is due solely to the fact that the inhabitants have 
increased from a few Indians to nearly two and a half 
millions of people. Nobody who owns a foot of soil 
on Manhattan Island has done anything by his own 
labor or skill to add one dollar of value to his pos- 
session; the community has done all; the community 
may take what it has given. 

Testamentary rights are of still more recent origin, 
of little ethical weight and of more than doubtful 
social value. The right of a man "to do what he will 
with his own," even during his lifetime, has been con- 



68 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

siderably limited by law and should be limited much 
more strictly. When he dies his property no longer 
belongs to him, but to those that come after him. 
All of a man's possible ethical rights of property end 
with his own life; he has no moral claim to bind the 
future generations. Each generation in turn has a 
right to the earth and the fulness thereof. The power 
to dispose of property by will is ethically indefensible, 
and ought to be abrogated. Every estate should be 
settled by law, in accordance with acknowledged prin- 
ciples of equity, as is now done in cases of intestacy. 
Social justice can be satisfied with no less. 

IV 

What has the Gospel of Jesus to do with all this? 
Some say, Nothing. The view of the Gospel that 
many hold to be the only orthodoxy is, that if we 
can save a man's soul from a future hell of which we 
know nothing, not even that it exists, we may without 
compunction leave his body in a present hell of which 
we know only too much. Our age needs a very dif- 
ferent view of the Gospel from that, and is rapidly 
getting it. We must have a Gospel that is concerned 
with men's bodies as well as with their souls, because 
it is a Gospel for this life as well as for the life to 
come. It is a Gospel that sets itself the task of trans- 
forming this world into the kingdom of God. 

Such a Gospel demands of its votaries first of all 
that they see clearly and think straight. Men and 
women of sensitive social conscience are vainly trying 



THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL JUSTICE 69 

to-day to make the Gospel practical by applying charity 
to the consequences of social evil, instead of applying 
justice to the causes of social evil. By so doing they 
perhaps succeed in solacing an uneasy conscience, but 
they accomplish nothing of social value. What is 
called Christian charity, or simply philanthropy, con- 
cerns itself only with effects, and in consequence it so 
directs its well-intended efforts as to increase social 
evils rather than remedy them. To individuals it has 
done much good, but society as a whole has been 
more injured by charity than benefited. None will 
deny that it has failed to diminish appreciably the 
vast total of social suffering. We may expect some- 
thing worth while to be done only when Christian men 
and women come to see that the Gospel does not per- 
mit a man to live at the expense of his fellows — 
when all forms of profit, and especially rent, dividends 
and interest, will be recognized as profoundly immoral, 
since all alike violate the law, "Thou shalt not steal." 
The Gospel of Jesus cannot tolerate two sorts of 
ethics : one for the working class, another for the 
capitalistic. For example : the workers are severely 
criticized for sabotage, even of the milder sort, by the 
very capitalists who constantly form "gentlemen's 
agreements" or other combinations to limit output and 
maintain prices — criticized by the very commission 
merchants who destroy food products rather than per- 
mit prices to be lowered. The Steel Trust, fixing the 
output of each concern included in the organization, 
and the price at which every pound of product shall 
be sold, cuts a sorry figure when it denounces workers 



JO THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

for a policy of "ca' canny." The Gospel of Jesus 
cannot tolerate one standard of ethics for individuals 
and another for corporations. "Corporations have no 
souls," said Blackstone, and the saying has proved to 
be true in a far different sense from that he intended. 
There is a certain hardness and ruthlessness in cor- 
porate management that is not found in business enter- 
prises conducted by an individual or a firm. A man 
may be haughty, insolent or vindictive in business, but 
he cannot practice the passionless cruelty, the imper- 
sonal brutality, of a corporation. A man may have 
many motives in conducting his business; a corpora- 
tion has one sole motive: dividends. 

Those who believe the Gospel of Jesus will try to 
understand the ethics of the workers before pronounc- 
ing condemnation. The right to life and liberty is 
meaningless, unless it means a right to employment. 
"You do take away my life, when you take away 
the means by which I live," said Shylock, and it re- 
mains true even if he did say it. The workers in a 
great industrial enterprise have an equity in the busi- 
ness that thinking employers are beginning to recog- 
nize. Hence, in the vocabulary of the worker, "Thou 
shalt not steal" translates into "Thou shalt not scab." 
Likewise, "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's 
house," under modern conditions means, "Thou 
shalt not covet thy neighbor's job." People 
outside of the working class find it difficult to 
comprehend this simple ethical principle, and wonder 
why the worker feels so bitter toward the "scab." 
Can people of the North who lived through the civil 



THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL JUSTICE 7 1 

war remember how they once felt toward a "copper- 
head"? Are we patriots enough to comprehend our 
fathers' execration of Benedict Arnold? Are we 
Christian enough to understand what our New Testa- 
ment says about Judas? To the worker, a "scab" is 
Benedict Arnold in industry ; he is Judas reincarnated ; 
he is both thief and traitor. 

It must be confessed that the attempt to apply the 
Gospel of Jesus to the solution of social problems is 
less successful than we have a right to expect. This 
is because the attempt is but half-hearted, in the first 
place, and because it is opposed by the very persons 
who ought heartily to forward it. A large part of 
the clergy are openly indifferent or secretly hostile. 
Many publicly declare that social service and social 
justice are but "fads," notions of a day, and unworthy 
of serious consideration. Of the Christian laymen of 
intelligence and high ideals, but a small proportion 
are sufficiently enlightened to perceive that social in- 
justice harms not only the class that suffers from it 
but even more the class that profits by it. The men 
who have succeeded, the men who are comfortable, 
the men for whom life is relatively easy, cannot be 
aroused to take interest in the abolition of privilege 
and the redress of social grievances. It is their selfish 
satisfaction with their own lot, their indolent refusal 
to think seriously of social problems, that is mainly 
responsible for the slowness of social progress. 

It is not a little discouraging to know that, after 
half a century of energetic wrestling by a few with 
the problem of crime, there is more crime than ever 



*]2 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

among us : that millions have been spent in the fight 
against disease, and tuberculosis and typhoid slay more 
victims every year; that society has been contending 
vigorously against vice for generations, and that the 
saloon and the brothel were never so flourishing ; that 
peace societies have been propagating their principles 
for generations, arbitration treaties have been con- 
cluded and The Hague tribunal established, yet every 
year all nations are increasing their armaments and 
one of the bloodiest wars of history has been raging 
within a twelve-month in the Balkans. Evidently one 
of two things must be true: either the forces aiming 
at social reform are all too weak, or the efforts made 
are misdirected and futile. Possibly we may see rea- 
son to conclude that both are true, but the error of 
method is the really serious thing. 

Napoleon's ideal, La carriere ouverte aux talents, 
has been highly praised by some who have imagined 
that social justice lies that way. But this is only to 
substitute an aristocracy of intellect for an aristoc- 
racy of birth or wealth. What of the poor without 
talents? No talents, no rights, is the only corollary 
from the Napoleonic formula. But we must have so- 
cial justice for all, not opportunity for a few to ex- 
ploit the less gifted of their generation. The United 
States has for a century offered a large career for 
talent, and we are by no means satisfied with the 
social results. The despised Middle Ages were, in 
many respects, marked by a social justice superior to 
our own. Society then tried to prevent unfair com- 
petition, to give every man a chance in his own rank. 



THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL JUSTICE 73 

Rising capitalism was from the beginning impatient 
of all such restraints, and insisted that they should 
be removed, so that competition might be made free 
and every man might find his level. It proved strong 
enough to carry its point; restraints were removed; 
competition was without limit. What followed? We 
have but to look about us and see. 

Men get in this world about what they deserve, some 
complacent social philosophers tell us. It is a specious 
saying, but untrue, and also irrelevant. Nothing is 
more idle than to consider the character of rich and 
poor as individuals. Beautiful souls are found in the 
slum and in the mansion, and ugly souls are found 
in both; and the relative proportions it is as unprofit- 
able to discuss as difficult to ascertain. What the 
poor "deserve" is not the question; the question is, 
What are we bound to give them? The goodness 
of this or that rich man is not the question ; the ques- 
tion is, What effect is unearned wealth likely to have 
on character? Nothing can be a clearer proposition 
than that unearned wealth in the hands of one man 
can only mean that earned wealth has been wrested 
from the hands of another. 

Our problem, looked at in a practical way, is to 
translate the laws of industrial production into terms 
of human happiness and virtue. The solution of the 
problem may be expected when as much time, study, 
intelligence and religion have been expended in secur- 
ing the due reward of labor as have been ex- 
pended on the making of profit; when the welfare 
of the laborer is deemed as worthy of consideration 



74 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

as equipment, efficiency and selling ; when the man be- 
hind the machine is held to be of greater importance 
than the machine. In a word, when the good of hu- 
manity is the impelling social motive. 

Scientific efficiency, of which we hear a great deal 
in these days, means among many other things — and 
this is really its most important meaning, though few 
recognize it — that men and women are not to be per- 
mitted to work beyond their powers. It is not so- 
cially profitable to allow overstrain, fatigue beyond the 
point that the daily and weekly rest will suffice fully 
to overcome. To tax the future by exacting too heavy 
tasks now may fill an employer's purse, but it will 
bankrupt society. The struggle for an eight-hour 
working day, and for one day's rest in seven, is an 
attempt to secure recognition of the worker's right to 
leisure. Leisure is good for man; much leisure is 
indispensable to the best humanity; but complete 
leisure is the worst thing man can have. A leisure 
class is always an idle class, a vicious class, an anti- 
social class. The curse of unearned wealth is the 
power that it gives to some men to be idle while 
others must work to keep them in their idleness. It 
is as unjust and unethical a system for the idler as 
for the worker — it corrupts both. The worker's leis- 
ure is now mainly involuntary, and takes the form of 
unemployment. Some is voluntary and takes the 
form of vagrancy. Not less than higher wages the 
worker needs more leisure, regular leisure, that he 
may have opportunity to develop a higher manhood. 
Some of them will misuse their leisure? Quite likely, 



THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL JUSTICE 75 

until they learn how to use it better. But "there is 
no cure for the evils of liberty but more liberty." 

Max Nordau tells us that the natural or zoological 
morality affirms rest to be the supreme merit, and does 
not define labor as pleasant and glorious except as it 
is indispensable to material existence. Pouget, follow- 
ing Nordau, denounces the usual ideas of the duty of 
labor and the dignity of labor as bourgeois morality. 
The premise of such reasoning is faulty and so the 
conclusion is invalid. Nordau does not correctly state 
the zoological morality. Man must work and incur 
fatigue in order to rest, just as he must be hungry 
in order to eat. Merely to masticate and swallow 
food is not eating; it is only the mechanical process 
that accompanies eating. Eating is the enjoyment of 
food, and for that hunger is indispensable. Doing 
nothing is not resting; no man can rest until he is 
tired. Labor is zoological morality, as a precedent to 
rest. 

Nordau's error probably arises from the fact that 
"labor", connotes two different ideas, for which we re- 
quire and fortunately possess two different words. 
"Labor" may be accurately defined as the pleasurable 
exercise of our faculties, physical or mental, in the 
accomplishment of a useful task. For the other idea 
commonly associated with "labor," we may take the 
word "toil," and define it as the irksome use of our 
faculties, mainly physical, in the accomplishment of 
a necessary or imposed task. The difference is the 
difference between voluntary exertion and compulsory, 
between the pleasurable and the irksome. Toil, en- 



j6 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

forced labor, is slavery. Whether the laborer is 
driven by the whip of a master or the whip of neces- 
sity matters little to him. The chattel slavery of the 
field has given place to the new wage slavery of the 
factory, with a great theoretic increase of liberty, but 
with little substantial betterment of the worker. Many 
object to "wage slavery" and "wage slave" as exag- 
gerated terms. Judge Pitney, now of the United 
States Supreme Court, in a decision while judge in 
New Jersey, held that picketing was robbery, on the 
ground that, "The relation of master and servant being 
established, then the services of the employee became 
a property right." A picket, striving to persuade a 
worker to stop giving his labor as "servant" to his 
"master," is trying to rob the latter of a property 
right ! What is the difference between this and chattel 
slavery ? 



V 



One of our chief national characteristics is that we 
are a wasteful people. We have burned up more of 
our forests than we have used. The deer and bison, 
the fur-bearing animals, the fish and wild fowl, once 
so plentiful, we have nearly or quite exterminated. 
We build houses and factories of flimsy materials, let 
them burn and rebuild them of the same over and 
over, at a cost many times greater than to build well 
once for all. It is estimated that $1,500,000,000 is 
spent by the business world every year in advertising, 
of which every cent is economic waste, though un- 



THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL JUSTICE J J 

avoidable under our present system, and the people 
pay for it in the advanced cost of living. 

One of our magazines recently called attention to 
the weak spot in our present business methods : all 
effort is concentrated on cheapening the cost of pro- 
duction, and practically no attention is given to the 
excessive waste in selling. This is probably because 
it is easy to pass on the cost of selling to the buyer. 
The result is that it costs from two to five times as 
much to sell as it does to manufacture. As an illus- 
tration of how the buyer is made to pay, it is related 
that the United States government lately bought 
12,000 typewriters in one lot (of a grade that usually 
sells for $100) for $14 each; and, at that, there was 
a profit for the maker of a dollar on each machine. 1 
What does it cost to make a $3,000 automobile? No- 
body but the maker knows, and he will not tell; but 
probably not over $500. A generation ago, as every- 
body knows, a high-grade sewing-machine could not 
be bought for less than $60; now department stores 
are selling better built machines of the same makes 
for $20 or less. While the bicycle craze lasted, the 
better class of wheels were kept at $150; and perhaps 
some readers have not yet forgotten how it transpired 
in a law suit that it cost less than $20 to make them. 
It may not be as bad as this in all forms of manu- 
facture, but it is only a question of degree; every- 

1 The manufacturers have recently explained that there was 
additional profit derived from the resale of old machines taken 
in exchange ; and that this accounts for the low price. It ac- 
counts only for a small part of the margin (§86) between the 
usual price and the price to the government. 



?8 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

where the cost of selling is excessive, and the buyer 
pays not only for his goods, but whatever is expended 
in inducing him to buy. 

The defenders of the capitalistic system have long 
been accustomed to claim that, with all its defects, 
some of which they admit, it transacts the world's 
business with great efficiency. When the system is 
analyzed, however, it proves guilty of such prodigal 
and reckless waste that one wonders how it can keep 
on going. A conservative estimate, supported at every 
point by the best statistical data obtainable, makes this 
waste amount to the stupendous sum of a hundred 
billion dollars a year — a sum that, if saved under a 
scientifically managed social and industrial system, 
would give each family of the United States an in- 
come of $6,000, or ten times the average wage-earn- 
er's income to-day. We have not even the consola- 
tion, such as it would be, of knowing that this loss 
of the producer is the capitalist's gain — it is abso- 
lute, irrecoverable loss. 1 

We are not only wasteful of our wealth, but of 
human life. We waste life by disease, by accident, by 
overwork, all preventable. A half million people die 
every year quite unnecessarily, and subtract just so 
much from our potential wealth. We are slowly learn- 
ing that men are more valuable than property, and 



'A. M. Simons, "Wasting Human Life," Girard, Kansas, 1912. 
Similar figures are given in Koester's "The Price of Ineffi- 
ciency." Koester is a civil engineer, educated in Germany; his 
thoroughness of investigation and his aloof impartiality give his 
conclusions great weight. 



THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL JUSTICE 79 

that the greatest of all our extravagances is this reck- 
less sacrifice of human life. A revolution would not 
cost more in blood and lives than the present indus- 
trial system is costing; 45,000 workers are killed every 
year by criminal negligence; one miner of every hun- 
dred dies, because his employer cares less for the lives 
of his men than he does for his mules. Nor have 
we completed our indictment, when we have counted 
those killed out-and-out by the system ; those who die 
by inches, years before their natural time, are also to 
be charged to its account. In England employees work 
on the average 55.2 hours a week, but one-half of 
our steel workers are compelled to work 72 hours a 
week, about a third work more than 72 hours, while 
a fourth work twelve hours a day for seven days of 
the week, with an occasional 24-hour work-day. Such 
labor cannot but result in early death, and in the de- 
generation of the race, physically, intellectually and 
morally. No demand for social justice is more insist- 
ent, or appeals more strongly to the conscience, than 
the demand that this needless sacrifice of human life 
shall cease. 

The great advance made within a few generations 
in productiveness of labor, through multiplication of 
machinery, has been of slight benefit to the laborer, 
though of vast profit to the capitalist. The old tools 
were merely aids to the hands and all labor was man- 
ual; the new tools, machines, have almost eliminated 
the hand. The machine now produces results of 
power, dexterity, complexity and even delicacy that 
no hand ever equaled. But "labor-saving" machines 



80 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

belie their name; they have saved the employer cost 
of labor, but they have not made the worker's toil 
lighter nor added appreciably to his wage. And the 
employer has, for the most part, been able to see 
nothing but the benefit to himself ; the just claim of the 
worker to a share in this increased production has been 
either denied or ignored. He has not been intelligent 
enough, in most cases, to see what his own highest 
interests demanded — that the greatest ultimate profit 
is not to be made by forcing wages down to the lowest 
level of subsistence for the workers. Mr. Redfield, 
the Secretary of Commerce in Mr. Wilson's cabinet, 
sums up his experience as a manufacturer and his con- 
clusions as a student of economics in these words : 
"Given the scientific spirit in management, constant 
and careful study of operations and details of cost, 
modern buildings and equipment, proper arrangement 
of plant and proper material, ample power, space and 
light, a high wage rate means inevitably a low labor 
cost per unit of product and the minimum of labor 
cost." 1 Swinish selfishness invariably defeats its own 
purpose. Only social justice can produce social pros- 
perity. 

One difficulty in the attainment of social justice 
is that many among us hold so obstinately to a po- 
litical philosophy that experience has shown to be with- 
out foundation in reality. This is a theory of the 
limited functions of the State, out of which grew the 

x "The New Industrial Day," p. 121. Mr. Redfield considers 
this summary of a long argument so important that he prints 
it in italics. 



THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL JUSTICE 8 1 

practical maxim, laissez faire, let things alone, inter- 
fere as little as possible with the "natural laws" of 
society. Those who entertain this theory believe that 
the State has done its full duty when it has applied 
the Marquis of Queensbury rules to industry and com- 
merce, and insured victory to the man who has the 
strongest "punch." This appears to be still the ideal 
of most economists, that the victory belongs to the 
strong. "The big company has a right to beat the 
little one in an honest race for cheapness in making 
and selling goods; but it has no right to foul and 
disable its competitor." * What right has the big com- 
pany to beat except the right of bigness ? That quota- 
tion helps us to comprehend the cause of the popular 
prejudice against the great capitalistic concerns. The 
mere size of corporations is not a bad thing, but it is 
a dangerous thing. For size means great resources, 
and that means great power, and power is dangerous. 
Power is nearly always used for selfish purposes, with- 
out regard to the good of society. The people are 
right, therefore, in regarding great corporations as a 
menace; the burden of proof is upon the corporation 
to show conclusively that it is promoting the public 
interest, not preying on the public. The presumption 
is invariably against it. 

The protection of the weak is, or should be, quite 
as much a function of the State as giving opportunity 
to the strong. The strong need no aid; they can 

*J. B. Clark, "Control of Trusts," New York, 1912, revised 
ed, p. 28. 



82 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

always look out for themselves and their own inter- 
ests; if government fails to protect the weak it has 
little social justification for existence. And the Gos- 
pel of Jesus certainly enjoins protection of the weak 
as the first duty of the strong. The Gospel, therefore, 
can never be adjusted to either competition or mo- 
nopoly — twin forms of industrial piracy, both of 
which fly the black flag and cut every rival's throat. 
Plato taught that the end of the State is to make 
men virtuous ; the modern view is that the end of the 
State is to make men comfortable; but why may not 
men be made both virtuous and comfortable? Is the 
highest virtue attainable without a certain measure of 
comfort? Surely the two ends are not incompatible, 
much less antithetic. The ideal of the State should 
be to secure such organization of society as will give 
to every person opportunity to live the largest life. 
This is also the idea of the Gospel of Jesus, for that is 
what the kingdom of God means. 

When we are told, then, by Herbert Spencer and 
others that the best government is that which governs 
least, our reply is, Yes, if it is despotism, oligarchy, 
aristocracy, using the machinery of government to 
plunder and oppress the people. It was under such 
experience that the maxim was developed. But if the 
State is a democracy, a people governing themselves 
for the common good, all the government that will 
promote the common good is desirable, and that will 
be matter for experimentation, not for a priori deci- 
sion. Men decry the demand for more legislation, as 



THE PROBLEM OF SOCIAL JUSTICE 83 

merely the attempt to cure evils of law by more laws. 
But law is only the orderly means by which men act 
together in society and enforce a common will and 
purpose. More and more legislation is inseparable 
from democracy. May it also be increasingly wise 
legislation! The alternatives are despotism or the 
mob. 

Another obstacle to progress toward social justice 
is belief that men cannot be made righteous by 
environment. But is it not quite as true to insist that 
men cannot become righteous without suitable environ- 
ment? If we interrogate our own personal experience, 
most of us will find cause to acknowledge how potent 
environment has been in our case. We can easily 
conceive a world in which it would be as easy for men 
to do right as it now is hard, because we have been 
fortunate enough to live in such a world. That is to 
say, our environment has always made it easy for us 
to do right and hard to do wrong. We have lived in 
surroundings and companionship full of incitement to 
virtue and almost free from incitements to evil. Our 
chief temptations have been temptations to be good 
and to do good. To do wrong has always meant for 
us that we must overcome all sorts of restraints and 
obstacles placed in our way by our conditions of life. 
Goodness, service of our fellows and brotherly love 
have been normal results of our surroundings ; and so 
far as we have failed to realize such ideals, we have 
been opposed to our environment, not in harmony 
with it. It ought to be easy, it is easy, for us to 



84 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

imagine a society in which not merely little groups 
shall furnish their members such environment, but the 
whole should be like this. Nothing less is demanded 
by social justice. Nothing else is contemplated by 
the Gospel of Jesus. 



CHAPTER III 

THE WOMAN PROBLEM 

Far be it from the writer even to seem to imply 
that woman's nature is so incomposite, her relations 
to society so uncomplicated, as to present but one 
problem for solution. The definite article in the title 
of this chapter is emphatic. It is intended to signify 
no more than that a single woman's problem, the 
economic, is what immediately concerns our discussion. 
Some would perhaps prefer to call this a group of 
problems, rather than one problem; yet it will be 
found, on careful examination, that the problems con- 
stituting the group all grow out of the economic in- 
equality of woman, and that to secure her economic 
equality is to solve all of them at once. 



"Woman's rights" has too long been synonymous 
with the ballot. A marked change in public sentiment 
has taken place within a decade regarding equal suf- 
frage. The conviction has been rapidly growing that 
there is one conclusive argument for woman suffrage : 
women want it. There are no arguments against it, — 

85 



86 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

only prejudices. The adoption of woman suffrage as 
a plank in the Progressive party's platform in 191 2 
no doubt means that this question has been practically 
settled — that it is only a question of time, and no 
long time at that, when the ballot will be given to 
women in all the States, as it has already been given 
in many of the newer States of the West. Some hard 
fighting will, no doubt, yet be necessary before the 
end is reached, for prejudice everywhere dies hard, 
but the goal is in sight. 

But equal suffrage is only one of the demands of 
that remarkable modern movement for which the name 
Feminism * has been devised ; in some respects it is the 
least important demand. Feminism demands for 
woman not merely equality at the polls, but equality 
everywhere — equality, be it observed, not identity. 
Feminism demands that whatever woman does shall 
be judged as work, not as the work of woman; and 
it demands that she be free to do any work that she 
cares to undertake. In other words, that the sex 
question shall be eliminated from practical affairs as 
far as is humanly possible. Wifehood and mother- 
hood will always be, as they are now, the highest 
calling of woman, but not every woman is called to 
be wife and mother, any more than every man is called 

1 An anonymous writer in the Century, for April, 1914, thus 
defines Feminism : "To meet life untainted : to labor, to suc- 
ceed or fail, as human individuals only; to feel handicapped by 
nature only, not by men; to seek their own success in self- 
chosen appropriate paths unhampered by laws or conventions 
from which men are exempt." The "square deal" for their sex, 
in short. 



THE WOMAN PROBLEM 87 

to be preacher or poet. Feminism merely demands 
that all other callings shall be open to woman on equal 
terms, and that the only question of her entering them 
shall be the question of her fitness. That can be de- 
termined, as in man's case, only by experiment. 

So long as woman's "wrongs" were conceived to be 
chiefly or wholly her exclusion from political affairs, 
so long as the "rights" demanded for her consisted 
of the right to vote and hold office, the agitation in 
behalf of women made not the slightest dent in the 
armor of conceit worn by the average male of the 
species. When orators declaimed about "down-trod- 
den woman," men merely grinned. They knew that in 
the majority of homes woman rules despotically. 
They knew that the laws — laws made and administered 
by men — are on the whole more favorable to women 
than to men. Even the average policeman will not 
club a woman as quickly or as brutally as a man — 
he remembers mother and sister and wife. The police- 
man who clubs a woman while in uniform is probably 
a wife-beater out of uniform. A jury in any State 
will acquit a woman on evidence that would convict a 
man. 1 It is well-nigh impossible to get a verdict of 
guilty on a capital charge against a woman ; and when 
she is condemned, almost always some expedient is 

1 In three years, thirteen women charged with murder were 
acquitted in Chicago (Cook County), and only one convicted, 
who died in jail. The State's Attorney said: "The blame is 
on jurors, who seem ready to bring a verdict of acquittal when- 
ever a woman is fairly goodlooking, or is able to turn on the 
floodgates of her tears, or exhibits a capacity for fainting." 
Associated Press dispatch, March 16, 1914. 



88 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

found to save her life. Whatever the statutes may 
say, the men who administer them have practically 
abolished capital punishment for women. In one 
State, a woman convicted of murder on the clearest 
evidence remained unexecuted for thirteen years, be- 
cause one governor after another refused to set a day 
for her execution ; and she was finally pardoned. The 
property laws of most States favor women at the 
expense of men — so far favor them as at times to be 
unjust. A husband is legally bound to support his 
wife, according to his ability and station, and if he 
fails she may herself buy whatever is necessary and 
he is liable for the debt. This obligation holds, even 
if she has money of her own, while he cannot touch 
a dollar of her property but by her free gift, nor is 
she liable for his debts. 

What has wrought the great change in men's atti- 
tude toward the agitation for woman's rights has been 
the enlarged conception of those rights on the part of 
women themselves. The social disabilities of women, 
rather than their political and legal grievances, have 
roused men to a new way of thinking. This is no 
doubt part of the general awakening regarding social 
conditions that is characteristic of society as a whole. 
Women have come to see also that they are contend- 
ing, not merely against artificial discriminations be- 
cause of their sex, but against wrongs rooted in eco- 
nomic conditions with which sex is only remotely re- 
lated, if related at all. This has given to twentieth 
century Feminism both a breadth and a depth that 
were absent from the Woman's Rights movement of 



THE WOMAN PROBLEM 89 

the nineteenth century. Men who were indifferent or 
hostile to the political aspirations of women are acces- 
sible to ideas regarding the economic wrongs of 
women. Men engaged in commerce or industry have 
practical knowledge of these wrongs, and already have 
latent ethical ideas regarding them that need only to 
be stimulated in order to rise to the region of con- 
scious thought and action. Such men, for the most 
part, acknowledge the obligations of Christian ethics, 
so far as they understand what these obligations re- 
quire. 

It is the office of the Gospel of Jesus to arouse these 
latent ideas and to clarify them, so that their ethical 
bearings will be definitely apprehended. It has long 
been the boast of apologists that Christianity has been 
the chief agent in the uplifting of woman. This claim 
has been sharply challenged of late, and some have 
even maintained that Christianity has actually retarded 
the emancipation of woman. A Feminist writer not 
long ago urged it as a reproach against the Christian 
attitude to her sex that women are classed with chat- 
tels and domestic animals in the tenth commandment. 
It might, of course, be pointed out that the tenth com- 
mandment is of Jewish origin, not Christian; but, 
apart from that, the objection would lose force if those 
who urge it would reflect a moment on the difference 
between an enumeration and a classification. 

II 

We have already seen that one of the greatest bless- 
ings of civilization, and a prime condition of social 



90 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

progress, is leisure ; a reasonable proportion of time to 
be used in rest, recreation, and culture. No one at 
present profits less by leisure and money than those 
who have most of both. They have come into their 
kingdom recently, for the most part, and have as yet 
not the least idea how to rule it. " Painting the town 
red," scattering money lavishly up and down the Great 
White Way, is the one means they can devise, in their 
poverty of intellect and imagination, to get rid of their 
surplus. It is quite as true of American women as of 
American men that they fall into two classes: those 
who have no leisure and those who have too much. 
It is even truer of women than of men, for the wives 
and daughters of a large proportion of men who work 
belong to the leisure class. Wliat will they do with 
it? is one of the most important of present-day ques- 
tions. Will these favored women choose the life of 
idleness, of luxury, of self-indulgence, or the life of 
social service? Much of our future welfare depends 
on that decision. As Ferrero has pointed out in his 
"Women of the Caesars," the decay of the Roman em- 
pire was in no small degree due to the fact that the 
women of Rome's upper classes chose the self-indul- 
gent life. 

On the other hand, the working-woman has little 
or no leisure, and this is consequently one of her great- 
est needs. She needs sorely not the leisure of idleness, 
but the leisure of congenial occupation. This is the 
more necessary the more mechanical and dull her work. 
And, as machinery takes an ever larger place in in- 
dustry, all labor will tend to become mechanical and 



THE WOMAN PROBLEM 91 

deadening. The greater need then of leisure, of pur- 
suits that will be a genuine re-creation, of systematic 
culture of body and mind. Women need such leisure 
more than men, for their more acute sensibilities suf- 
fer greater harm from monotony and mechanism. 

The whole spirit of modern industrialism is opposed 
to such sentiments, and the capitalistic system is incom- 
patible with progress in this direction. The spirit of 
industrialism is to extract from the worker the last 
ounce of effort of which he is capable ; and the capital- 
istic system takes from the worker the fruits of his 
labor, beyond the barest subsistence, and gives them to 
the fortunate few. No class feels so keenly the effects 
of this social injustice as women who must work for 
a living. No class has profited less by the great indus- 
trial and commercial development of the past century. 
It was a long step forward for society as a whole when 
steam was harnessed, new machinery was invented, 
and the factory resulted. One worker could then pro- 
duce as much as ten, fifty, a hundred, had produced 
before. So great an increase in wealth should have 
meant a general increase in social well being. But who 
got the increased product? There was another great 
social advance when the railway and the steamboat 
supplemented the factory, and stimulated production 
by simplifying distribution. But, again, who got the 
increased product? Still another tremendous impulse 
has been given during our own day to all forms of in- 
dustry, as the manifold applications of electricity came 
to be discovered. But who got the increased product ? 
It was divided as an old salt said prize money is di- 



92 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

vided in the navy: they sift it through a ladder, said 
he, and what sticks goes to the enlisted men, the rest 
goes to the officers. About the same proportion of the 
increased product of industry fell to the share of the 
producers; the non-producers got nearly all. And of 
all workers the women got least. 

In 1900 there were 5,319,397 women engaged in 
gainful occupations out of a population of 28,246,384 
over ten years of age. Nearly one woman in five is a 
wage earner. And of these wage earners, 1,312,668 
were in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits. This 
is the largest proportion of women workers to popula- 
tion in the world, and makes our problems more acute 
than those of any other land. We have done less 
toward the regulation of this form of labor, less for 
the protection of our women workers, than any other 
country. Even Russia has more humane laws for the 
protection of women than some of our American 
States. Pennsylvania, second among our common- 
wealths in population, wealth, and industries, ranks 
twenty-sixth in her labor legislation for women and 
children. Ponder it well, men of America : we are the 
most backward country on earth, that pretends to the 
possession of a Christian civilization, in the protection 
of womanhood. And, when you have thought well of 
it, be proud, if you can, that you are an American citi- 
zen! And a Christian! 

A people who are careless of their women and chil- 
dren offend against a fundamental social instinct, for 
women and children are the future of the race. What- 
ever harms them attacks society at its most vulnerable 



THE WOMAN PROBLEM 93 

point. To bear and rear healthy children is the most 
important of race functions, and society cannot afford 
to permit women who are or should be engaged in the 
work of maternity at the same time to do exhausting 
work, in factories or anywhere else. Every industry 
must be judged by this test. The New York clothing 
trade has made a few millionaires and thousands of 
consumptives. But what do the millionaires care about 
that? It is "one of the incidents of the trade." The 
employer may look on a woman as merely a means of 
producing wealth, but the community ought to take a 
different view of the matter, and assign her a higher 
grade in the scale of being. It is the function of the 
Gospel of Jesus to inspire this higher ethical note in 
industry, but what is the gospel actually proclaimed 
accomplishing ? The clothing workers have been strik- 
ing repeatedly in recent years to better their condi- 
tions, among other things to abolish tenement-house 
work ; the employers have been fighting hard to retain 
all the old abuses, especially work in tenements. Now, 
it is notorious that this particular form of industry is 
exceedingly hard on women and children. But in their 
contests how many expressions of sympathy have the 
strikers received from Christian sources ? How many 
discussions of the issues, indicating even an intelligent 
grasp of their side of the question, did we read in re- 
ligious newspapers or hear from Christian pulpits? 

The conditions of women workers are perhaps worst 
in the textile industries. Attention has been directed 
to these conditions within a year or so by the strikes at 
Lawrence, Massachusetts: at Little Falls, New York, 



94 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

and at Paterson, New Jersey. A shocking state of 
affairs, dimly suspected perhaps before, but not defi- 
nitely known, has been forced on the attention of the 
entire nation. Nobody can hereafter plead ignorance. 
The fact has been disclosed that girls have been earn- 
ing from $2.50 to $5.00 a week, few of them attaining 
the higher figure. Women have been working sixty- 
five hours a week for $3.00 (and part of this "over- 
time" work, so as to increase the pittance a little) ; 
some have worked as many as eighty- four hours a 
week for a maximum wage of $7.00, but more often 
$5.00. Such labor is continuous; the workers do not 
leave their machines even for luncheon, eating what 
they can snatch as they work, so as to lose no time. 
And often such labor is performed in extremely un- 
sanitary conditions, while, of course, the workers must 
live in crowded rooms, amid all sorts of disease-breed- 
ing surroundings. 

While these are cases of extreme hardship, perhaps, 
the condition of women workers generally is little bet- 
ter. Sanitary surroundings may sometimes be better, 
but the economic return for labor is much the same in 
all forms of industry, and in all localities. The Social 
Service Commission of the Inter-Church Federation of 
Philadelphia issued a public warning in 1912 to girls 
of rural Pennsylvania not to come to that city for work 
unless they have prospect of a situation that will pay 
them at least $8.00 a week, that being the minimum 
on which a girl can support herself there respectably. 
At the same time they stated that in nine of eleven 
textile industries of the city the maximum wage falls 



THE WOMAN PROBLEM 95 

below this minimum requirement. According to sta- 
tistics furnished by the Federal government, the aver- 
age earnings of women and girls in factories is $4.62 
for the first year and $5.34 for the second. After ten 
years they attain the magnificent wage of $8.48 ; but of 
the total number employed the average pay of 40 per 
cent, is under $6.00. 

Nor is the case any better when we turn to women 
employed in stores. In the three great cities of New 
York, Philadelphia, and Chicago there are nearly 36,- 
000 women employed in the department stores that 
are so great a feature of our American social and busi- 
ness life. Their average weekly wage is $6.13. The 
average girl must work eight years before she can re- 
ceive $8.00, the least sum that will support her re- 
spectably in Philadelphia, and inadequate in either New 
York or Chicago. Other cities are no better. Miss 
Butler's careful investigation in Baltimore 1 brought 
her to the conclusion that there are twice as many 
earning less than $5.00 as there are earning more than 
$6.00. The minimum cost of living in Baltimore is 
estimated by Miss Butler as $6.70, which certainly does 
not err by excess ; yet of the employees of stores in that 
city 54 per cent, are paid less than the cost of board 
and clothes. 

In the spring of 1913 an investigation was under- 
taken by a committee of the Illinois State Senate that 
disclosed results briefly summarized above ; and, while 
this investigation was in progress, and Chicago em- 
ployers were contending that $8.00 a week was a gen- 

1 "Saleswomen in Mercantile Stores," New York, 1912. 



96 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

erous salary for a working girl and quite enough for 
her to live on, the guardian of a fifteen-year-old girl 
came into a New York court and declared that his 
ward found it impossible to get along on an allowance 
of $12,000 a year. As her estate produces an income 
of $50,000 a year, the surrogate obligingly increased 
her scanty allowance to $20,000. Is any comment nec- 
essary ? 

Some may be inclined to think that the conditions 
in the smaller towns are better than in these large 
cities. The only difference appears to be a quantitative 
one : there are fewer industries and fewer workers in 
the small city than in the large. An investigation of 
the smaller cities of Pennsylvania resulted in the con- 
clusion that no working woman could be properly 
maintained in these towns for less than a weekly wage 
of $6.80; and this included nothing for amusement, 
only the absolute necessities were taken into account. 
In these cities the average pay of girls is rather below 
than above $5.00. * 

What possibility of leisure, what possibility of cul- 
ture, what possibility of physical well-being, what 
probability of continuance in virtue, can the student of 
the woman problem find in such facts ? Has anybody 
the hardihood to say that such facts accord with the 

1 The case is little different in England. In Birmingham there 
are said to be 116,000 working women, and 14 shillings is esti- 
mated to be the lowest wage that will keep a woman worker 
respectable and healthy. The average wages for unskilled labor 
for women over seventeen are barely 10 shillings. 



THE WOMAN PROBLEM 97 

Gospel of Jesus, the gospel of equality, of brotherhood, 
of deliverance? 



Ill 



What are the causes of this economic deficiency of 
women, and are they removable? The causes are, in 
part, general, as is shown by the fact that the defi- 
ciency is general, not confined to any one branch of 
industry or commerce. Careful investigation shows 
that one great cause is the relative inefficiency of 
women's labor. It is not a fact, as many women have 
charged and still believe, that women are generally 
paid lower wages than men for the same work. There 
is sometimes sex discrimination, but not generally. 
The real fact is that women and men are generally 
employed in different kinds of labor, and women are 
paid lower wages for less efficient service. There is 
little sentiment in business; employers, as a rule, no 
more discriminate against women than they discrimi- 
nate in their favor. Male and female employees are 
alike machines for production, and it is purely a ques- 
tion of the best machine. It will be impossible to per- 
suade many women that such is the case, but investiga- 
tors of their own sex have come to this conclusion. 1 
That women's wages are not determined by sex con- 
siderations is proved, among other ways, by the fact 
that their wages have at times increased in higher per- 
centage than those of men. 

1 For example, Edith Abbot in "Women in Industry," pp. 313- 
315. 



98 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

Assuming as a fact this relative inefficiency of wom- 
en's work, can a good reason or good reasons be as- 
signed for it? It has been suggested that girls show 
a greater tendency than boys to drift into employment 
by the route of least resistance, rather than prepare for 
a well-chosen line of work. There are fewer trades 
and skilled occupations for them, and they take the 
first work that offers, through ignorance and inertia. 
Woman's expectation of marriage makes her less ef- 
ficient; she takes her work less seriously; likewise 
hers is a shorter working life. 

One of the chief factors in the problem, therefore, 
is to increase the efficiency of women workers. We 
must begin back of the time when they seek employ- 
ment — in the schools — and secure for them a better 
training. This will be discussed more thoroughly in 
the chapter on "The Problem of the Child," but just 
here one aspect of the question demands attention : 
In all the discussions and experiments regarding man- 
ual training and vocational schools attention has been 
paid chiefly, if not entirely, to the needs of boys. The 
training of girls for industrial life has been compara- 
tively neglected, in spite of the fact that their need is 
really greatest. We shall never see the efficiency of 
women workers greatly increased until this defect in 
our educational scheme is remedied. So long as men 
enter on their callings on the whole better prepared 
for efficient service than women, nothing can give her 
economic equality. No determination of society, no 
fairness of employers, no legislation can give validity 
to the equation 2=3. 



THE WOMAN PROBLEM 99 

But all competent investigators are agreed that inef- 
ficiency is not the only cause of low wages for women. 
It is not even the chief cause. The chief cause is the 
modern revolution in industry, the effect of which has 
been felt in the home as everywhere else. The intro- 
duction of factory-made clothing, food, and furnish- 
ings has set a host of women free from the tasks of 
their grandmothers, and they have turned to other 
work. Girls go into factories and stores and ofhces, in 
many cases, because the combined earnings of the fam- 
ily are none too large for the family's support. In 
other cases they seek work rather than sit idly at home 
and be supported by the labor of father and brothers. 
In either case, it is much to their credit that they have 
responded to the call of duty, or have chosen the useful 
life in preference to the ornamental. But the inevit- 
able result has been such an increase in the body of 
women workers as to cause keen competition for 
work, and the consequent forcing of wages to the low- 
est sum that the most needy or most eager workers are 
willing to accept. Inasmuch as a large part of women 
workers live at home, and only partially support them- 
selves, their competition for employment has forced 
wages below the subsistence point for those who lack 
this advantage. Many department stores will employ 
only girls who sign a statement that they live at home ; 
and justify the low wages paid by this fact, and its im- 
plication that their employees do not depend entirely 
on their wages for a living. 

Another serious factor in producing low wages for 



IOO THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

women is that the employer is able to deal with them 
as units; there is great lack of organization and co- 
operation among them, as compared with men. It is 
not true that women lack the faculty of organization. 
Every church has long known how efficiently women 
can organize and conduct enterprises, and that they 
often show superior business skill in such work. It 
is true that their efforts have been mainly confined to 
things that are in themselves trivial and not worth 
their while: bazaars, fairs, and festivals. But, in 
larger and more important enterprises, such as wom- 
en's missionary societies, the Women's Christian 
Temperance Union, the various suffrage organizations, 
they have been uniformly successful. Women's clubs 
and leagues in great variety have sprung up in the past 
two decades, and hardly one of them has been a prac- 
tical failure. There are now even trades unions of 
women. Still, it remains true that this spirit of co- 
operation is a very recent thing, and that in all forms 
of industry women are still far behind men in effective 
organization. The centuries-long subjection of wom- 
en has repressed initiative and made cooperation 
difficult for them. But they are learning the trick, and 
already they are beginning to teach men lessons in 
what we have fondly persuaded ourselves was our ex- 
clusive game. The greater subserviency of women 
to custom has made them slow to adopt the principle of 
cooperation. But they are fast learning that only the 
weak fear and obey customs ; the strong make customs. 
And women are coming to realize their strength. 



THE WOMAN PROBLEM IOI 

A favorite explanation of women's low wages, and 
one that has been much insisted on by the wealthier 
classes, is the distaste for domestic service among 
American-born white girls. Of the 1,124,383 domestic 
servants returned in the census of 1900, less than thir- 
teen per cent, were native born of native parents, while 
nearly seventy per cent, were foreign born or negroes. 
Domestic service was once the chief resort of the un- 
trained woman; now scores of factories and stores 
offer her employment — at starvation wages, to be sure, 
but on terms so much more satisfactory to her than 
the position and work of "servant" that she will no 
longer accept the latter at any price. In industry or 
commerce a woman's hours may be long, but they are 
fixed, and her evenings, Sundays, and holidays are hers 
to spend as she wills. This greatly enlarged leisure, 
and the fact that she is not a "servant," but may re- 
gard herself as a "lady," give her such a sense of free- 
dom and dignity that domestic service in comparison 
seems to her a status of slavery. No wages or comfort 
will be regarded by women bred in a democracy as suf- 
ficient compensation for the confinement and humilia- 
tion of domestic service. Servility, in name or spirit, 
is incompatible with democracy. The servant problem 
is already acute, and will become increasingly so, as 
long as the aristocratic spirit that demands "servants" 
lingers. If people living in a democracy insist on 
maintaining artistocratic institutions, they can do it 
for a time by importing their "servants" from foreign 
nations where real aristocracy exists. 



102 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 



IV 



The ultimate solution of the problem of women's 
wages must be postponed until we consider the general 
problem of poverty. For a complete solution must be 
something radical, something that goes to the very 
bottom of our social evils and deals with primary 
causes. But there are two important measures pro- 
posed for immediate adoption that profess nothing 
more than relief at the points of greatest pressure: 
a minimum wage for women and an eight-hour work- 
ing day. The ignorance of our public men about such 
measures is both discouraging and disgraceful. When- 
ever statutes of this sort are proposed and discussed, 
the articles in our newspapers, the speeches in our leg- 
islatures, and other forms of public debate invariably 
proceed on the tacit assumption that these are the 
crude proposals of theorists, experiments in legislation 
now to be made for the first time, propositions that 
we undertake a pioneer work in social reform. Where- 
as the fact is, as every public man who pretends to 
intelligence should know, that every measure of social 
justice proposed in the United States in recent years 
has a counterpart in European countries that has been 
in successful operation for years, sometimes for a gen- 
eration. 

A minimum wage bill, for example, was passed in 
England in 1906, and not for women only. England 
had been shown the way by one of her Australian colo- 
nies. Victoria adopted the minimum wage for work- 



THE WOMAN PROBLEM IO3 

ers of both sexes in 1896. At first it applied only to 
five "sweated" trades : the making of shoes, bread, 
clothing, underwear, and furniture. Its operation was 
so successful, and so won the approval of both em- 
ployers and employed, that, by 1910, virtually all the 
industries had been included in its scope. Experience 
confirmed economic theory, and both showed that a 
minimum wage tends to increase production, by in- 
creasing the efficiency of both workers and establish- 
ments. The latter is accomplished by the elimination 
of those concerns that can be maintained only by levy- 
ing a tax on the community to make good their own 
defects. Those concerns that are most favorably situ- 
ated, best equipped, and managed with most ability 
get the business, and society profits by the elimination 
of costly production of goods by the unfit and in- 
capable. 

The proposition to ensure to women workers such 
compensation as will maintain them in comfort and 
decency is nothing else than the principle of economy 
translated into the terms of modern business and social 
life. "Conservation" is one of the watchwords of our 
time. Conservation is too often narrowly interpreted 
to mean only material things : our forests, mines, 
water-power, and the like. This narrow commercial 
interpretation is inadequate ; the most needed conserva- 
tion is the conservation of human beings. The law 
of the sea must become the law of the land: women 
and children first. 

Employers oppose a minimum wage law on the plea 
that, if they were compelled to pay the wage indicated, 



104 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

they could no longer conduct their enterprises, and 
must either become bankrupt or go out of business. 
The sufficient reply to this plea is : Any business that 
cannot be maintained, save by paying women a wage 
below a fair living standard, is a business that ought 
not to continue. There are probably fewer such than 
many suppose, far fewer than interested employers 
assert, but there ought to be none. This is not a 
harsh judgment founded on vague, impractical senti- 
ment, but what it is now the fashion to call "a cold 
business proposition." For such a business, instead of 
contributing to the wealth of the community, is a tax 
on the community's resources. Society has to make 
good the deficiency of wages ; in some form and in the 
long run the deficient income must be supplied. If the 
underpaid worker lives at home, her family must con- 
tribute to her support, and that contribution is their 
tax paid to keep going an unprofitable business. If she 
does not live at home, soon or late the deficiency must 
be made good by some form of "charity." The em- 
ployee becomes ill and must be treated free of charge 
in some hospital or dispensary ; or she becomes a pau- 
per and must be wholly supported at public expense; 
or she contracts tuberculosis and must be sent to a 
State sanatorium; or she goes on the street. In any 
case, the community ultimately pays the tax. People 
must live, people do live, and, if their wage will not 
maintain them, the burden of their maintenance in the 
end falls on the public. It is as certain as mathe- 
matics. 

Society has thus far elected to maintain at great 



THE WOMAN PROBLEM IO5 

cost public and private charitable institutions to care 
for the workers who have been insufficiently paid, 
rather than compel employers to do justice. If it 
wishes, it can continue that practice, but, to say the 
least of it, it is hardly economical. Millions are ex- 
pended to-day in charities that ought to go into the 
pay envelopes of the workers; and, if they did go 
there, small need would be felt of the charities. It is 
thus, on one side, merely a problem of economics, 
while, on the other, it is a problem of humanity, of 
justice, of the practical application of the Gospel of 
Jesus. 

We must not, however, blink the fact that the 
minimum wage and the eight-hour working day are 
merely palliatives. It is even a question if they would 
long palliate. The serious economic criticism is 
made of the minimum wage that its effect would be 
only temporary. It would immediately produce non- 
employment of those women whose labor cannot be 
made profitable at the minimum fixed by law; and 
they would either become a tax on society in some 
form, or would seek employment in other indus- 
tries only to lower wages in them. Or, even 
supposing that this difficulty could be surmounted, 
and that all women workers can be given em- 
ployment and paid as the law directs, cost of produc- 
tion will be increased, prices must be raised, the cost 
of living rises, the minimum wage becomes inade- 
quate, and the last state of the woman worker is at 
least no better than the first. Under the wage system 
and industrial competition there must ever be the same 



106 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

vicious circle : higher cost of living leads to a demand 
for higher wages, and, this gained, there follows 
greater cost of production, higher prices, and increased 
cost of living again. There is no end to the process, 
and no real relief for the workers in it anywhere. 
Nevertheless, as temporary palliatives, the minimum 
wage and the shortened working day are worth try- 
ing. The wisest economists, though they may guess, 
cannot know how they will work until they are tried. 

It is the same problem that must be faced in some 
form by all organizations and reformers that are ex- 
perimenting with palliatives, because they lack either 
insight or courage to attempt a radical remedy. The 
trades unions are meeting the same difficulty. What 
has the workingman accomplished through his unions 
in the way of social betterment? In some cases, not 
in all, he has won an increase of wages. But if he 
must pay the amount of this increase and more in 
higher cost of living, wherein is he helped? And the 
undeniable fact is that cost of living has increased 
much faster than wages for two decades, and the proc- 
ess seems likely to go on indefinitely. 

Next to the ignorance of men who lead public opin- 
ion, and of the legislators who enact public opinion 
into law, the greatest obstacle to progress in dealing 
with this economic problem is our courts. We call 
them courts of justice, but they have too often proved 
courts of injustice. For our sins we are afflicted with 
a lot of Bourbon judges, who have neither learned any- 
thing nor forgotten anything in a lifetime of legal 
practice, who have stood stock still intellectually and 



THE WOMAN PROBLEM IO? 

ethically while the world has run by them. In their 
devotion to precedents that have come down to them 
from a different social order, they cannot see the de- 
mands of the present. Our courts are standing to-day 
as a serious obstacle, and often as an impassable bar- 
rier, to social reform. They have decided, for ex- 
ample, that a statute prescribing shorter hours of labor 
for women is unconstitutional, because it abridged 
women's freedom of contract! How well such a de- 
cision accords with the favorite maxim of lawyers, 
that the law is the perfection of reason! 

Worst obstacle of all to progress is, no doubt, the 
indifference of well-to-do people in general, who are 
in no way personally affected by the wrongs and suf- 
ferings of working women. If society at large does 
not advocate the present iniquities, it at least tacitly 
acquiesces in them; to a large degree it profits by 
them ; and it has hitherto refused to face the problem, 
but has taken refuge in cowardly silence. At critical 
moments it fails to speak the decisive word in favor of 
justice and progress. We call ourselves a Christian 
nation; we profess some respect for the teachings of 
Jesus, for the Golden Rule, for the Beatitudes. Ac- 
tions speak louder than words, and by our actions we 
give the lie direct to every such profession. By our 
fruits we are known, and all our conduct gives em- 
phatic approval, not to the social ethics of Jesus, but to 
such beatitudes as this : Blessed are the exploiters, the 
sweaters, the oppressors of women, for theirs is the 
Kingdom of Profit. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD 

To inspire men to perform their social duties is a 
prime object of the Gospel of Jesus. That is the way 
of salvation for the individual and for society- — a way 
by which the one is delivered from sin and the other 
from misery. Of all the social duties, none can take 
precedence of duty to the child. A Bill of Rights for 
childhood, that has been widely adopted as a basis for 
social work, declares that every child has an inalien- 
able right : To be born right ; To be loved ; To have 
his individuality respected; To be trained wisely in 
body, mind, and spirit ; To be protected from evil per- 
sons and influences; To have a fair chance in life. 
These rights of the child impose corresponding duties 
of parenthood. But duties of parents are duties of so- 
ciety also, which is bound, for its own present welfare 
and future happiness, to supplement the performance 
of parents wherever that is deficient. 

These inalienable rights of the child are violated at 
almost every turn, and by every class of society. Nat- 
urally, each class has its own pet methods of violation. 
Among the well-to-do the tendency is toward the hurt- 
ful indulgence of children. The American spoiled 

108 



THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD IO9 

child is the marvel and the disgust of intelligent for- 
eign observers. Among the poor the tendency is 
toward inhuman abuse of children, partly in the way 
of actual physical violence, partly in loading them 
with tasks too heavy for their years. The ethical re- 
sults, though quite different, are about equally injuri- 
ous to social welfare, but the economic results are 
worst in the case of the poor child. According to El- 
len Key, this is the century of the child. As one looks 
about him one can hardly escape the conviction that 
this is expression of a hope rather than statement of 
fact. May achievement speedily make good this pro- 
phetic title ! 

What is the century thus far doing for the child? 
It is still permitting him to be exploited by a system 
of child labor that is but a euphemism for child slavery 
and child murder — a system compact of woeful waste 
and brutal savagery. Of the male children reported 
by the census of 1900 between the ages of ten and 
fourteen (4,083,041) there were 875,640 wage-earn- 
ers; and of the 3,997,193 female children 321,982 were 
workers. In all, 1,197,324 of the nation's children 
were earning their bread and helping to support their 
families. Not a single one of them should have been 
at work. Thousands of children of still tenderer 
years are engaged in daily labor. Little tots that ought 
to be in kindergarten are working for thirty cents a 
day. Children all over our land are hopelessly toiling 
in the treadmill of industry who ought to be going 
with shining morning faces to school and filling the 



IIO THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

playgrounds with their joyous laughter. Many of our 
"good" people cannot believe that such statements are 
anything but a hideous slander. It seems like treason 
to one's country to believe that a system so full of 
cruelty and iniquity can exist among us. It is the ig- 
norance, the incredulity, the supineness of the "good" 
that keep such a system in existence. It would be so 
disagreeable to believe that these things are true, for 
then we should be compelled to do something about it ; 
our consciences would not let us rest; so it is much 
more comfortable to disbelieve. 

What kind of a people must we be to permit such 
things and feign a convenient ignorance of them? For, 
of course, no one is really ignorant. No one can pos- 
sibly shut eyes and ears tight enough to keep himself 
from knowing. For several years the newspapers have 
been full of evidence, that not even the careful editing 
of the slaves of capitalism could evacuate of all their 
significance. Did Christian men and women see and 
ponder the testimony printed in the summer and fall 
of 1 9 12 concerning child labor in the canning factories 
of the great Empire State? It was shown that 1,259 
children under sixteen were employed in the canneries 
investigated; 141 less than ten years and 14 less than 
six. Mere babes were kept at work shelling pease and 
stringing beans until their fingers cracked open and 
had to be done up in rags. Surely an aroused and 
militant conscience will do something to end such 
abuses, or we shall soon have to take lessons in human- 
ity from Turkey and China. 



THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD III 



I 



Of all forms of social waste, child labor is the 
least excusable, because it is so patently foolish. The 
child is the embodied future. We can never have good 
citizenship without protected childhood. Premature 
work means premature decay of physical energy and 
moral fiber. A long and well-trained youth means full 
development of human powers and a long, productive 
life. A short youth means imperfect development of 
body and mind, and, as a necessary consequence, a 
short and comparatively unproductive life. Child labor 
is a process of squandering future wealth to satisfy 
a present need — that is to say, it would be that, were 
there any present need, as to which something will be 
said later. Child labor denies the child proper educa- 
tion, demands of immature bodies and minds what 
only maturity can safely attempt to give. It places 
the child at the most plastic period of life under con- 
ditions that not only fail to develop him into a normal 
human being, but stunt his body and stupefy his mind 
and give a wrong twist to his moral nature. An ex- 
perienced manufacturer has said: "You can protect 
a machine, you can guard the buzz-saw, but no law 
that you can enact can in a large industry protect the 
heart and soul of a child.'' 

Books like "The Bobbin Boy," in which boys of a 
former generation were told about the early life of 
Nathaniel P. Banks, and similar tales of the rise of 
poor boys to distinction or wealth, while they may 



112 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

have done something to stimulate the ambition of the 
young, have accomplished untold harm by encouraging 
the impression that going to work at a tender age is, 
on the whole, favorable to achievement. Physiological 
science is absolutely and irrevocably opposed to such a 
conclusion. It maintains that child labor is a costly 
method of discounting the future, which inevitably 
curtails the total contribution of the individual to the 
wealth of the world and makes society just that much 
poorer. Men are not so foolish in the treatment of 
domestic animals as they show themselves in the treat- 
ment of the young of their own species. What farmer 
would work a young colt ? And, when the farmer does 
begin to work his colt, does he set him to plowing 
from sunrise to sunset? Any farmer who did that 
would be promptly suspected of insanity by all his 
neighbors. But a child, even at fourteen, is still a 
"colt." Is a two-legged colt worth less than the four- 
legged? That he is seems to be the judgment of 
thousands who possess both, if we may infer their 
mental processes from their actions. 

The right of the child to his childhood, and the duty 
of society to protect childhood, are ethical principles 
that do not require to be argued or proved. Merely 
to be stated is sufficient to secure assent to them from 
any normal man or woman. But the man engaged in 
business, especially in manufacturing, is not a normal 
man. He has become so wonted to some abuses that 
he does not see them; he cannot even see them when 
they are pointed out to him. We must appeal from 
him, therefore, to the larger public. Society at large 



THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD II3 

suffers more than the child himself from neglect to 
give him adequate protection. For the child is our 
most valuable national asset ; and to waste this source 
of wealth, or even to fail to make the most of it, is 
criminal folly. 

Socially speaking, the worst use to which we can 
put a child is to put him to work. Play should be 
the only work of a child. To be sure, this is flat con- 
tradiction of the theory by which most of us were 
bred ; for in our childhood we were taught that "work 
is good for us," and various more or less disagreeable 
tasks were exacted of us by our parents, on the princi- 
ple that the more disagreeable the task the more valu- 
able as discipline. But modern psychology has proved 
conclusively that such a theory of child training is 
altogether wrong. Play, in the sense of the agreeable 
exercise of our faculties, is the way by which they 
develop most rapidly and normally. Play is not only 
the best means of developing body and mind, but has 
equal ethical possibilities, and is the most effective of 
all preventives of juvenile delinquency. The child who 
is not taught to play as well as permitted to play is 
not only deprived of his birthright but is subjected to 
a direct course of preparation for the penitentiary. 

Not enough attention has been as yet directed to 
the fact that play is a great school of ethics. The first 
requirement of all childhood games is to "play fair," 
and to learn that rule thoroughly is the foundation of 
subsequent character. Possibly some of us can recol- 
lect among our schoolmates boys who never learned 
fairness on the playground. If we have watched them 



114 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

in their later career we have also noticed that they have 
never played fair in business or profession; the habit 
of taking an unfair advantage that they acquired as 
children has stayed by them all their lives. If the 
history of men who have built up great industries and 
fortunes by secret rebates and other unfair advantages 
could be investigated, the chances are ten to one that 
it would be found that as schoolboys they were 
"cheats" and "snitches." The boy who defrauds his 
playmates at "one-old-cat" and "duck-on- the-rock" is 
the future trust magnate. For the children's rule of 
fair play in games is just the Golden Rule applied to 
the affairs of the playground; and all our social ills 
are merely failure to apply that same rule in the great 
game of life. 

The freshness and spontaneity that are so valuable 
gifts in every serious pursuit — and so rare — are de- 
veloped in the child by play. It is no small part of 
the tragedy of life that these qualities are gradually 
crushed out of the man. Even the infrequent cases 
in which they survive would probably not exist but 
for a joyous childhood. Society's problem, one of the 
gravest of problems, is to make these cases less rare, to 
increase freshness and spontaneity everywhere and 
make life better worth living for all. This can be done 
only by wise training during the tender and formative 
years, and for this reason the child's right to his child- 
hood must be asserted and protected. Such protection 
will increase the productive power of labor indefinitely. 
Everybody knows that a man does his best work when 
he is interested in his task, and that there cannot be a 



THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD II5 

better recipe for poor work than to set a man at a task 
in which he takes no interest. When men bring to 
industry more of the' child's freshness their work will 
become play, a pleasurable exercise of their faculties. 
From the viewpoint of ultimate efficiency, therefore, 
child labor becomes an obstacle to progress that so- 
ciety cannot afford. 

II 

Child labor is socially unnecessary. The social sur- 
plus of wealth is already very great and is increasing 
rapidly from year to year. Individuals may need the 
labor of the child, society does not. Arguments in 
favor of child labor on economic grounds that are 
often put forth by interested manufacturers are found 
on analysis to be unfounded. No legitimate business 
will suffer from giving adequate protection to children. 
But even if the contrary were true, and it were demon- 
strated that certain industries would suffer by shorten- 
ing the hours of child labor and raising the age limit, 
the answer of society must be: let them suffer. So- 
ciety cannot afford to maintain industries by such a tax 
on its resources as child labor involves. If an industry 
cannot stand on its own feet, without this form of 
subsidy from society, let it perish. Such an industry 
is not a necessity, but a luxury far too costly. 

As matter of fact, wherever additional protection 
has been given to children, not only has industry not 
suffered, but the output has been increased and em- 
ployment has been given to a larger number of per- 



Il6 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

sons. Experience has convinced manufacturers, who, 
before experience, were opposed to the legislation, that 
protection of children is a benefit to industry. It could 
not be otherwise. Economic theory, founded on ob- 
servation, maintains that child labor is unprofitable 
for two reasons. The first is that, while it seems 
cheap, it is the dearest labor in the long run — dearest 
because least efficient. It is a short-sighted industrial 
finance that looks only at the pay-rolls instead of scan- 
ning the quantity and quality of the output. Employ- 
ing inefficient labor, even at low cost, entails a loss on 
any manufacturing business. The man who cannot 
see that is not fit to be in business, and probably will 
not be long, if he has shrewd competitors. Child labor 
is not only future waste but present loss. A second 
economic objection to child labor is that it lowers 
the standard of wages and of working and living con- 
ditions, and so lessens the efficiency of all labor. The 
child is a competitor of adult laborers, even of his 
own parents, whom he and they fancy that he is help- 
ing. Child labor tends to lower sanitary standards, 
for the child will submit to conditions against which 
adults would revolt. Thus industries that make large 
use of child labor become parasites on society, for they 
must be supported by what is in effect a tax on other 
more economically conducted enterprises. 

The laws that have thus far been enacted, and many 
of those now proposed for enactment, fail to promise 
any considerable betterment, partly because of feeble 
enforcement, partly because the advocates of reform 
have been and are too timid to ask for laws with teeth 



THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD I \J 

in them. Child labor must, not only be regulated in 
all industries, but should be prohibited in some : in all 
those that tend to destroy health and retard growth. 
It is bad enough that adults must be employed in such 
institutions; it is intolerable that children should be 
admitted to them. The age of employment is too low; 
fourteen years is the highest we have had courage yet 
to demand; it should be sixteen, or even higher. But 
the whole principle of an exclusive age limit is wrong; 
fitness, not age, should be the test of individual em- 
ployment. Aside from a convincing certificate of the 
required age — and thousands of certificates now issued 
are fraudulent — two other qualifications should be re- 
quired : First, the child offering himself for employ- 
ment should be required to present a certificate of 
graduation from a grammar school, an honorable com- 
pletion of the entire eight grades. Second, there 
should be a physical test ; the child should be examined 
by a proper medical officer, appointed and paid by the 
State for the purpose, and should be required to pre- 
sent to the employer this officer's certificate of physical 
fitness for labor. No child ought to be employed until 
it is certain that he will not suffer irreparable injury 
from his labor. A New York statute that took effect 
October I, 191 2, requires such a physical examination 
by the medical officer of the Board of Health before 
"working papers" are issued. It cannot be doubted 
that every State will soon have such a law; it is the 
very minimum of rational regulation of child labor. 
The first and greatest cause of the increase of child 
labor is the industrial revolution that has resulted in 



Il8 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

the socialization of labor in the modern factory sys- 
tem. The machine and the factory first made child 
labor profitable on a large scale — immediately profit- 
able, not economically and, in the long run, profitable. 
The opportunity has stimulated greed to the utmost. 
The greed of parents leads them to sacrifice the ulti- 
mate interests of their children for immediate gain; 
and this is true of any parents who are not compelled 
by actual want to put their children to work, yet do it. 
But more effective as a cause is the greed of capitalists, 
who, to make a profit for themselves, are willing to ex- 
ploit children simply because their wages are lowest. 
There is also the greed of the children themselves, 
anxious to begin to make money, and not intelligent 
enough to perceive ultimate consequences. And per- 
haps most reprehensible of all is the greed of society 
at large, ever clamoring for cheap goods and caring 
nothing at what cost cheapness is attained. 

Next to this cause, and often barely distinguishable 
from it, is the poverty of the working class. The high 
cost of living of late years has made the problem of 
subsistence an acute one for all workers, but especially 
for the unskilled or little skilled, whose wages are low- 
est of all, but whose need of food, clothing, and shel- 
ter is as great as anyone's. Many parents are em- 
ployed at wages that enable them to make "just too 
much to die and not enough to live." The average 
workingman would no doubt prefer to see his children 
growing up under the best conditions for producing 
health, intelligence, and character, instead of compet- 
ing with him in industry and lowering his wages be- 



THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD II9 

low a decent standard of living. But the immediate 
questions for him are: What shall we eat? and, 
Wherewithal shall we be clothed? These questions 
cannot be postponed; their immediate solution is ur- 
gently demanded ; and to the workingman the only pos- 
sible solution seems to be that his children shall be- 
gin at the earliest time the law will permit (and often 
considerably earlier) to contribute their earnings to 
the family fund. When the question of present hun- 
ger and cold is pressing, what use of urging on men 
that their future interests will be injured by the only 
conduct that promises to keep them alive? 

It is, however, not merely the ultimate, but the im- 
mediate, interests of the workers that are threatened 
by child labor. Of this they are conscious; at least, 
they recognize effects, if they do not clearly perceive 
causes. The effect of child labor is destructive to 
family life. One of the most frequently urged ob- 
jections to socialism is that it would break up the home. 
Those who raise that objection should look more care- 
fully at what the existing system has already done 
and is daily doing to destroy the home. Child labor 
is especially disintegrating, in that it results in the in- 
dependence of the child before he is fitted for it. He 
is earning his own living and knows it, and that makes 
him impatient of parental discipline and control. He 
has been compelled to play a man's part before he 
became a man, and he demands, in turn, a man's priv- 
ileges. In many cases the children are the chief sup- 
port of the home ; the father is dead or worse, and the 
mother dare not restrain her children for fear of los- 



120 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

ing their earnings. This is particularly harmful in 
the case of young girls. To give a child independence 
before he is mature enough to use it properly is as 
rational as to give a baby a loaded revolver for a play- 
thing. Moreover, children thus deprived of oversight 
and training, even if they do not go wrong, receive no 
preparation for life. When they marry and attempt 
to establish homes of their own, the factory-bred boy 
lacks sense of responsibility and too often deserts his 
family in a crisis of its fortunes, while the factory-bred 
girl knows nothing of homekeeping and the inevitable 
result is matrimonial unhappiness and domestic ship- 
wreck. In every way the home is sufferer, and must 
be sufferer so long as the present system continues, and 
particularly so long as child labor is permitted. 



Ill 



The problem of the child is not solely an industrial 
problem; it is even more an educational problem. To 
prohibit the child from working is therefore only the 
first step toward solution ; quite as much as to be saved 
from premature labor, he needs to be prepared for in- 
telligent and efficient labor when he reaches the proper 
age. No one, probably, would maintain that such is 
now the case. Among our social reforms, reform of 
education is one of the most pressing. 

No educational reforms are worthy of serious con- 
sideration that are not based on study of real condi- 
tions. More than twenty million children are attending 



THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD 121 

primary schools of the United States, the vast majority 
of them in public schools. We spend $450,000,000 on 
these schools, nearly as much as for automobiles, a 
little more than a third of our tobacco bill, and not 
much more than one-fifth of what is worse than wasted 
in drink. Even so, we have not schoolhouses adequate 
to contain this great school population. In New York 
City alone, over 100,000 pupils are attending school 
but half the time because of lack of room. If the 
truant laws and labor laws were adequately enforced 
hardly a city in the Union would find its schoolroom 
adequate. Our parsimony is disgraceful. Until lately 
much of the ancient patriarchal idea survived in our 
laws and customs : the child was the property of his 
father. The father, therefore, could give the child 
such an education as it pleased him to give, take him 
out of school and put him to work at as early an age 
as he chose and keep the child's wages until his ma- 
jority. The latter is still his legal right, but the other 
privileges we have taken from him by laws of compul- 
sory education and truancy. Having assumed the 
obligation to educate the child, it is our plain duty to 
fulfil it. 

For this ridiculously inadequate expenditure of ours 
we are getting more than we deserve, but far less than 
we need, in the way of education. We were long ac- 
customed to consider ourselves the most intelligent and 
progressive nation in the world; our Fourth of July 
orators told us so every year, and we believed them. 
But in 1880 the official report of the Commissioner of 
Education rudely awakened us. Our percentage of il- 



122 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

literacy in that year was 22.15, while that of England 
and Wales was 10.55, Scotland 6.46, and Prussia 4.21. 
We have improved considerably since then, so that our 
percentage has been reduced to y.y, but we are still 
far behind Germany, considerably behind Scotland, and 
probably not in advance of England. 1 In Germany, 
where the whole male population of full age is obliged 
to do military service, only three men in a thousand 
are found to be illiterate when they join the colors. 

The whole blame of illiteracy is obviously not to be 
placed on the schools. Almost any American would 
say instantly that foreign immigration is chiefly re- 
sponsible for our large percentage, and next to that 
the element of negroes and Indians in the census. But 
we must not be too complacent in thus laying the blame 
on the foreigner. The immigrants who come to us, if 
themselves illiterate, are more eager to have their chil- 
dren educated than the older American stocks. The 
census figures, when analyzed, show a greater percent- 
age of illiteracy among native whites of native parent- 
age than among native whites of foreign parentage. 
The proportion of children from five to fourteen years 
attending school is greater among those of foreign 

1 There is a difficulty in making accurate comparisons because 
the methods of gathering the facts are diverse. The test of il- 
literacy in Great Britain is inability to sign the marriage regis- 
ters. In most of the Continental countries, where compulsory 
military service obtains, the test is the ability of army recruits 
to read and write. Only France and Italy, like the United 
States, make an educational census of the whole population 
over ten years of age. 



THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD 1 23 

parentage and foreign birth than among native Ameri- 
cans of two or more generations. 1 

Fact is worth more than theory in education, but 
we must have a theory. That something must be 
wrong about the American theory seems to be indicated 
by these facts. It would perhaps be more strictly ac- 
curate to say that we have had and still have two 
theories of education. One is, that education should 
be chiefly cultural, and has as its end the unfolding 
and perfecting of the human spirit. The other theory 
is that education should be chiefly practical, and its 
end the disciplining of human faculties into a perfect 
tool. The one sort of education would fit the child 
to make a living; the other, it is said, makes him fit to 
live. One or other of these theories is held by most 
teachers with so much of conviction as to imply sus- 
picion of the other and often open hostility to it. 
Neither theory can be said to have been carried out 
consistently anywhere. 

The reason may be that the inherent good sense of 
the average American community has felt, if it has 
not clearly perceived, that the unflinching carrying out 
of either theory is undesirable. Culture, pursued as an 
exclusive aim, too often becomes an intellectual drug 
habit, which unfits its devotee to face life and see 
things as they are. There may be place in an aristoc- 
racy for a man so highly cultivated that he does not 
know how to earn an honest dollar, but not in a democ- 
racy. On the other hand, the "practical" ideal, thor- 

1 The illiteracy of native whites, born of native parents, is 
5.7; of native whites, born of foreign parents, 1.6. 



124 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

oughly enforced and measurably realized, would make 
us a nation of Gradgrinds and altogether eliminate 
spiritual progress. But if it is undesirable to follow 
either ideal exclusively, neither is it necessary to ar- 
range some weak and ineffectual compromise between 
them. They are not so much contradictory theories as 
complementary. In our discussions we are too prone 
to forget that the "practical" subjects may be made 
"cultural," while most of the subjects supposed to be 
purely "cultural" may be so taught as to be "prac- 
tical" also. The distinction, when not merely verbal, 
is one of emphasis and method. 

On one thing we can surely all agree, and in the 
end we shall be found to agree : any subject that is not 
directly connected with life has no proper place in 
primary education. The high school and the university 
exist for the cultural subjects, with less regard to their 
severe practicality, and primarily considering what will 
most promote symmetrical development. The common 
school exists to give the elementary education needed 
by every citizen, and, while all its aims should be prac- 
tical, the cultural element should not be, need not be, 
and, in fact, is not excluded. 

If, in the light of what has been said, we look 
farther into the conduct of our public schools, we shall 
probably come to the conclusion that their greatest 
fault has thus far been that they have been organized 
on an assumption totally divorced from reality. It has 
been assumed by educators that a single type of educa- 
tion is adequate, that all children can and should have 
the same training ; that a single type of training will fit 



THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD 125 

them for callings the most diverse. Nothing could well 
be more at variance with the facts of life. The conse- 
quence of this assumption has been that our public 
schools have been organized for the needs of the well- 
to-do and the rich. They have provided a fairly ade- 
quate training for children a large proportion of whom 
develop a taste for higher education, and are of an 
economic grade able to afford it, or have sufficient per- 
sonal initiative and aggressiveness to secure it against 
all obstacles. But for such as do not desire the higher 
education, or cannot obtain it, our schools offer oppor- 
tunities so vastly inferior that one may almost say they 
offer no opportunity at all. There is, in other words, 
no adequate provision for the education of that vast 
majority of children who must earn their living by the 
labor of their hands. The public school curriculum is 
dominated by the high school, and the high school by 
the university. We have the anomaly of a school sys- 
tem avowedly democratic, but really aristocratic. 
While the democracy "pays the freight" the freight is 
too often delivered at the wrong address. 

How serious this failure of our schools is probably 
few of our people really appreciate. We have so long 
been accustomed to flatter ourselves that we have the 
best school system in the world that we listen with a 
certain impatience to anybody who questions the ac- 
curacy of this notion, and so the facts filter but slowly 
into our minds through this layer of conceit. An ex- 
amination of schools in fifty-two cities, representing 
with fairness the entire United States, shows that the 
majority of the children who enter complete only the 



126 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

fifth grade; only half of those entering are carried to 
the final elementary grade (eighth), and one in ten to 
the final year of the high school. Or, to put it in other 
figures that may be even more impressive: of 1,000 
children of school age, only 120 graduate from the 
grammar school and six from the high school. 

Why do so many children begin to get an education 
and fall by the way? Investigation shows that rela- 
tively few children leave school because of failure in 
studies, at least as the direct cause. The majority 
leave in order to go to work. Poor health or sickness 
in the family is assigned as a reason by a large num- 
ber, some of whom may really have left because of 
failure. An intensive study of 300 pupils showed that 
not over twenty per cent, left school at the age of four- 
teen because of real economic pressure. But, on the 
other hand, more than two-thirds of the children and 
three-fourths of the parents did not believe that it was 
worth while to spend more time in school. Their con- 
viction was that the school was teaching them nothing 
of real value to them ; and the probability is that they 
were right. But a school system that, by its repressive 
discipline and its unpractical curriculum, contrives to 
make children hate school rather than love it, to make 
children glad of any excuse to leave and go to work, 
instead of imparting a thirst for further learning, must 
so far be reckoned a failure, must it not? A system 
that miserably fails to accomplish its avowed purposes 
is not an object to which we can point with pride, but 
something of which we ought to be bitterly ashamed. 

No public school system can be called even tolerably 



THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD \2J 

satisfactory so long as it does not carry the majority 
of entering children through at least the eight elemen- 
tary grades. With better teaching this might be done 
even now, for the majority of children spend sufficient 
time in school to complete the eight grades. The 
schools are not efficient enough to get the best results 
possible in the time now available. Consequently the 
defects of the schools that call for immediate remedy 
are those known as retardation and repeating : the fail- 
ure of so large a proportion of pupils to obtain promo- 
tion at the end of the year, and their consequent obli- 
gation to take the work of a grade a second and even 
a third time. It is estimated that $27,000,000 is spent 
annually in the instruction of "repeaters." Or, in 
other figures, one-fifth of the school money is devoted 
to educating one-twentieth of the children — which, to 
say the least of it, is bad business. 

The causes of retardation are complex, including 
factors so diverse as truancy, ill-health, dulness, and 
laziness. The chief cause, however, is none of these, 
but curriculum and instruction adapted, not to the slow 
child, or even to the average child, but to the unusually 
bright child ; and next to this unquestionably comes ir- 
regularity of attendance. When three-fourths of the 
children are present less than three-fourths of the 
school year, a school cannot reasonably be expected to 
produce satisfactory results. Conceding this difficulty 
to be beyond the scope of school authority, and to be 
in the sphere of parents and the law, it remains true 
that the school can and must do much to prevent re- 
tardation. 



128 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

In days to come we shall look back with amazement 
on the whole present machinery of grades, examina- 
tions, marks, and promotions, and wonder how it ever 
came to be called an educational system. We shall 
think it the strangest thing that children could ever 
have been trained according to the absurd ideal of 
"making marks." We shall wonder why the best pupil 
was supposed to be he who most nearly approximated 
the intelligence of a parrot. We shall be unable to 
understand why schools did not train pupils for power, 
and make the test of their efficiency not the ability to 
remember, but the ability to think and to do things 
worth doing. At present the best we can hope is the 
abatement of some of the rigors of the system. 

Schools have already found advantage in making 
promotions oftener than once or twice a year; term 
promotions, at least, should become the rule. The fre- 
quent reclassification of pupils encourages the bright 
and does not discourage the dull, by trying to force a 
pace too rapid for them. Promotion of qualified in- 
dividuals, rather than of whole classes, promotion by 
subjects rather than by grades, would solve a large part 
of the problem. 

Combined with this method many schools have 
found great advantage in giving more attention to in- 
dividual instruction, special attention to the dull and 
slow. This has been found possible without increasing 
the teaching force, but if it necessitates smaller classes 
and more teachers, let them be employed. The effi- 
ciency of the schools is the first thing to be considered; 
expense is decidedly a secondary consideration. The 



THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD 120, 

one thing in their public expenditure of which Ameri- 
cans never complain is the amount spent on schools — 
unless it may be an occasional grumble, for which there 
is only too good ground, that they get so little for their 
money. 

The true theory and practice of education we owe 
to Froebel (who, of course, built on the labors of his 
predecessors, particularly Komenius, Rousseau, and 
Pestalozzi), and he merely applied the Gospel of Jesus 
to the school. The whole idea of the Gospel is freedom 
from the bondage of law and enjoyment of the liberty 
of grace. A Christian life is the free and spontaneous 
doing of the will of God, not because God drives us 
with a whip of obligation whose lash is the fear of hell. 
The Gospel ideal is nature corrected and directed by 
grace. Whether Froebel understood this ideal or no, 
consciously or unconsciously he applied the principle to 
education. He threw aside the notion that it is good 
discipline for a child to be forced, or to force himself, 
to perform distasteful mental tasks — which is nothing 
less than our old foe, asceticism, under the new face 
of education. It is a notion wholly pagan, not Chris- 
tian. Froebel saw that a child's mind and a child's 
body should be developed through pleasure, not 
through pain, by being trained to do delightful things, 
not things repulsive. Hence the kindergarten, with its 
fundamental principle that all work should be made 
play. 

But as the child develops the reverse is equally true : 
all his play should become work. That is to say, the 
pleasurable employment of faculties should no longer 



I3O THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

be an end sufficient in itself, but become a means of 
accomplishing useful things. Yet the distinction be- 
tween play and work should never become entirely 
clear to a normal man or woman. Mark Twain hit 
the fundamental philosophy of social activity, when 
in "Tom Sawyer" he defined play as work you don't 
have to do. The difference between play and work is 
not the amount of physical exertion respectively in- 
volved — men play themselves to an exhaustion as utter 
as is ever produced by work — but the sense of obliga- 
tion to do. Take away that burdensome sense, some- 
how make all work inviting, and it becomes play. The 
greatest of all social problems lies just there : how to 
annihilate work. The school can do this now ; society 
may do it by-and-by. 

Dr. Montessori has made the first real advance in 
education since Froebel. Since all our knowledge is 
obtained through the senses, it would appear obvious 
that education ought to begin with the training of the 
senses and proceed to the training of the mind. But, 
instead of doing this obvious thing, education has for 
several thousand years been devoted to training the 
mind, leaving the senses to be trained by the experi- 
ences of life in any chance way. And, even as to train- 
ing the mind, attention has been directed mainly to 
cultivating the one faculty of memory, with little or no 
attention to apperception, reasoning, imagination. Ed- 
ucators have inexplicably ignored the fact that nobody 
has ever seen a mind apart from a body. The funda- 
mental fact of pedagogy is that the mind can be 
reached and developed only through the body. 



THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD 1 3 1 

The value of the Montessori method is that it begins 
with the training of the senses, teaching the hands of 
the child and through these the mind. She is applying 
to normal children the methods devised and found 
effective in the case of the abnormal and defective. 
She is availing herself of the newer psychological 
knowledge to modernize the methods of Froebel. 
With him she recognizes the principle of free develop- 
ment; no constraint is put on the child to learn what 
the teacher thinks it best for him to know, but his own 
faculties are given free course. The play instinct is 
seized upon and utilized as much as possible, and edu- 
cation is made a process of pleasurable exercise of his 
faculties by the child according to his own impulses. 
No wonder the progress made under this method aston- 
ishes all beholders by its rapidity and solidity. No 
wonder that even "weak-minded" children respond 
readily to it, for these have senses as capable of train- 
ing as the strong-minded. It is the first rational, scien- 
tific and really practical system of education ever de- 
vised, and it is all these because it follows the method 
of nature. 

Yet even Dr. Montessori has not given us the last 
word. Educators have learned, albeit slowly and un- 
willingly, that whatever the child is taught must be 
made to interest the child ; but they still shy at the con- 
verse principle that whatever interests the child must 
be taught. But the two principles must go together if 
we are to have a wholly rational system of education, 
and even Montessori has only arrived at the first — re- 



132 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

discovered what Froebel and others had taught before 
her, and that Froebel at least had embodied in a work- 
able system. 

It is easy, much too easy, to over-stress the objec- 
tion to our schools that they are not "practical." They 
must not be made too practical. Industry has as its 
aim production, and insistently demands an education 
that will make school graduates better producers. Edu- 
cation must aim at the unfolding of human powers, not 
for production solely, but for life, with due regard to 
the fact that people must earn a living, but not forget- 
ful that "the life is more than the meat." One kind of 
training is in the sphere of the useful, the other of the 
ideal. But, again let it be said, this does not imply in- 
compatibility, still less hostility, between them. Use- 
ful activities may be modified if not directed by the 
ideal, and the ideal may keep in view the practical as 
at least one of its ends. 



IV 



The years devoted to the training of the child are 
all too short, as well as ineffective. The compulsory 
school age should be raised to sixteen and all labor 
should be forbidden before that age. The primary 
schools should be so improved that the average child 
will graduate from them at twelve. For the interven- 
ing four years a new system of training should be 
devised, or a great expansion and improvement of one 



THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD 1 33 

already in partial operation, and made so attractive and 
helpful that, instead of one in a hundred graduating 
from our secondary schools, as now, 75 per cent, or 
more should be graduates. This is not too high an 
aim and is by no means an impossible result. 

As a preparation for this secondary instruction, 
manual training should be introduced and made ef- 
fective in all primary schools and continued through 
all the grades. It should be genuine manual training, 
a continuation of the Montessori principle through the 
later years of instruction, adjusted to the growing intel- 
ligence and information of the child. Genuine manual 
training, one says emphatically, something not synony- 
mous with industrial training, indeed quite different. 
Real manual training is part of education; industrial 
training is a device of business. The value of manual 
training in the primary school is not practical but cul- 
tural. The use of the hands is an indispensable part 
of development of the mind, as the new psychology 
has taught us. It enlarges the child's material for 
thinking and trains him in its use ; that is, in more ac- 
curate thinking. Education without manual training 
imparts words and ideas, great things, priceless things 
indeed, but of no use until brought to the test of reality. 
Until his world of thought is made to conform to the 
world of fact a child wanders in a maze of dreams. 
One of the worst features of our education at present 
is that the child is taught in school a theory of life 
that all his experience of home and street contradicts, 
and presently, when he enters shop or store, it is 



134 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

shattered to bits, and there is no Omar to teach him 
to remold it nearer to the heart's desire. 1 

Because of its cultural value manual training should 
be given to every child, without regard to social stand- 
ing or probable calling. A boy should learn to use 
ordinary tools, not because he is to be a carpenter or 
a plumber, but because he will very likely be a lawyer, 
and a better lawyer for such training. No man is edu- 
cated until he can do as well as know. Girls should be 
taught as well as boys, but perhaps in a different way. 
A chief value of manual training is its effect in vitaliz- 
ing all the other school w.ork ; it puts new meaning into 
arithmetic, for example, for a child to discover its use 
in measuring and calculating his work. A psycholo- 
gist would predict this; the experience of the class- 
room proves it. Manual training interests children 
who are not interested in routine school work, and 
causes the teacher to revise hasty judgments of the 
intelligence and capacity of pupils that have been 
founded on bookwork only. 

That this is the right way in education has been 
discovered by the negro race before the white. As 
teachers we should all take off our hats to Booker Wash- 
ington. There was not a white man in America who 
had the sense to establish Tuskeegee Institute. When, 

1 This is recognized by some of our foremost educators. Dr. 
James Russell, head of the Teachers' College at Columbia Uni- 
versity, is reported in a public address to have said: "The 
greatest peril of our education to-day is that it promises an 
open door to every boy and girl up to the age of fourteen, and 
then turns them ruthlessly into the world to find most doors 
not only closed but locked against them." 



THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD I35 

after the civil war, the white race wished to do some- 
thing for the uplift of the negroes, we established col- 
leges in which they were instructed in Latin, Greek, 
and higher mathematics; and theological schools in 
which they were given courses in Hebrew, Greek exe- 
gesis, Church history, and systematic theology. That 
was the measure of our sense : a determination that 
the negro should have just as good instruction, just as 
lofty educational ideals, as the white. But Mr. Wash- 
ington saw that his race must be taught to make a liv- 
ing, as the indispensable foundation for making a life 
— that economic independence was the way of salva- 
tion for the negro. And so he established Tuskeegee, 
where negro boys and girls are given a plain English 
education without frills, and are at the same time 
taught how to earn an honest and comfortable liveli- 
hood. In the process they are given all the culture that 
as individuals they are capable of absorbing, all that in 
the present economic conditions of their race is of 
value. 

In secondary schools, attention may be properly 
given to the probable future of pupils. The present 
high school is well adapted to the needs of the class 
that attend it. But alongside of the present high 
schools, which are too literary and exclusively cultural 
for the needs of the majority, should be established 
schools of equal grade of the industrial and technical 
kind, frankly devoted to the preparation of children 
for various forms of manual labor, and others to pre- 
pare for "business," the various clerical and semi-pro- 
fessional callings. Excellent private schools make part 



I36 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

of this provision now, and graduate annually thou- 
sands of students; but all forms of secondary instruc- 
tion should be a public charge, not one kind merely. 
Every argument that can be advanced for the high 
school applies with equal force to the other classes of 
secondary schools. And besides there is this further 
argument, surely not lacking in force : they are more 
needed. 

For the present, until public opinion will not merely 
support but compel the raising of the school age to 
sixteen and the provision of such secondary schools as 
have been indicated, much might be done for those 
compelled to go to work at fourteen by the establish- 
ment of continuation schools, where they may acquire 
the theory of what they learn in practice in the shop, 
so as not to be all their lives at the mercy of rule o' 
thumb. Employees should be taught how much it is 
to their interest to gain such education, because it 
will promote their efficiency and add to their earnings. 
Employers should be taught how much it is to their 
interest to have their workmen made more intelligent 
and efficient, so that the cooperation of the employing 
class may be secured for these schools. A few schools 
of this class have already been established, and em- 
ployers have sent their apprentices with continued pay 
for half a day or a day a week. The results have 
been so excellent that, while at first employers merely 
permitted attendance on the part of their apprentices, 
they now require attendance. But for those who can 
remain in school until sixteen or after, industrial and 
technical high schools, of grade fully equal to the pres- 



THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD 1 37 

ent high schools, ought to be provided without delay. 
As a temporary provision, courses might be established 
in the present high schools in mathematics, physics, 
chemistry, and drawing, as they apply to trades and 
industries of our day. 

All this may seem visionary to those who encounter 
these ideas for the first time. Such incredulous per- 
sons will perhaps be astonished to hear that Germany 
has had this method in practical operation for a gen- 
eration. There are eleven fully equipped technical 
high schools, with a teaching staff of nearly eight hun- 
dred, and 16,570 students, of whom 2,000 are women. 
There are four agricultural high schools, besides 
agricultural institutes at eight universities, and 67 
other agricultural schools of lower grade, not to men- 
tion 195 similar schools that are maintained only in 
the winter. Other technical schools are : 1 5 schools of 
mining; 15 of architecture and building; 5 academies 
of forestry; 27 schools of art and art industry; 429 
commercial schools; 100 schools of textile manufac- 
tures; 12 for special metal industries; 12 for wood 
working ; four for ceramics ; 1 1 for naval architecture 
and engineering; 19 for navigation; and 11 music 
schools. 1 

The success of the system goes far to explain the 
great strides forward that have placed Germany at the 
head of the industrial nations of the world. The boy 
or girl in the primary schools is assisted by the teacher 
to make choice of occupations for which they are best 

1 These facts are given on the authority of the "Statesman's 
Year-Book." 



I38 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

fitted, and psychology is invoked to give aid in this 
matter. All this is in marked contrast to the Ameri- 
can boy's headlong fashion of going to work, taking 
the first job he can get, and trying one thing after 
another until, if he has sufficient good luck, he finally 
discovers something for which he is not too unfitted 
to get along after a sort. The German teacher then 
makes it his business to see that the pupils get the 
supplementary training that will best fit them for the 
work chosen. Employers are compelled by law to 
excuse their child workers for instruction without loss 
of pay, and also to pay the tuition fees. These, how- 
ever, are said to be merely nominal, the chief expense 
of the schools being borne by the municipality and the 
State. The result of a generation's working of the 
system is that practically all the manual laborers of 
Germany, excluding agriculture, are skilled workmen, 
and the rough work to which unskilled labor is ade- 
quate is now done almost wholly by foreigners. 



V 



After all, is not the greatest defect of our school 
system that it still makes no adequate provision, in 
most cases no provision whatever, for the physical cul- 
ture of the child? Obviously, this is quite as impor- 
tant as his mental culture, but educational theory has 
hitherto been that care of the child's health and physi- 
cal development belongs to the parent and the home, 
not to the school. And perhaps an ideal division of 



THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD 1 39 

responsibility and work would be that. But the school 
must face facts, the school must get results; and its 
methods must be adapted to existing fact and desired 
result. It is incontrovertible fact that the parent and 
the home do not care adequately for the physical de- 
velopment and health of the child. It is equally in- 
controvertible that a child in poor health, or with a 
body imperfectly developed, cannot do his school work 
properly. Systematic medical inspection and syste- 
matic physical training are, therefore, an indispensable 
part of a school system. For a few children of the 
well-to-do these may be superfluous things, but for the 
great majority of school children, even from the well- 
to-do classes, it is the condition of normal proficiency 
in study. 

A modern school might as rationally be left with- 
out desks, text-books, and blackboards as without 
gymnastic apparatus and a playground. And a play- 
ground is not a mere vacant lot to run about in, but 
should have the fittings of an athletic field. Games 
and exercises should be taught as carefully as the other 
school subjects, and proficiency here should count for 
as much as proficiency in class. The calisthenics intro- 
duced into the schools a generation ago were an excel- 
lent thing of their kind, a welcome relief to muscles 
and nerves tired by ordinary school tasks, but they are 
quite useless for physical culture. Manual training 
would, of course, do something for the bodily develop- 
ment of pupils, but the chief reliance must be on the 
gymnasium and the playground, where regular work 
is done under a competent instructor. Such work 



I40 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

would be directed to the removal of physical defects 
and the securing of a symmetrical physical growth. 
The remarkable results obtained in many colleges by 
compulsory physical exercise under competent direc- 
tion both shows the practicability of the proposal as 
applied to the public schools and warrants the hope of 
great improvement in national physique and national 
health. Let the advocates of the new and much talked 
of eugenics direct their efforts to this point and they 
will be able to free their movement from some of its 
present absurdities. If for a generation we should 
bestow on the bodies of our children half the atten- 
tion that we now give to their minds, we should be- 
come the admiration of the world. 

Investigation of our schools shows that no small 
part of the failure of the pupils to do their work prop- 
erly is due to the fact that they are not sufficiently 
nourished. It is impossible for a growing child to 
study well on little breakfast and less luncheon. It 
is true that the children of European immigrants are 
generally accustomed to a light breakfast; but that 
should be followed by a hearty luncheon, and this is 
seldom the case. Their parents are often at work, and, 
in lieu of a home meal, five cents or less is given them 
to buy luncheon, which as often as not is spent for 
candy instead of more nourishing food. To provide 
a good midday meal for the children, that will enable 
them to do their work without physical exhaustion, has 
already been found essential in certain quarters of 
some cities, and will ere long be regarded as much a 



THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD I4I 

matter of course as any other kind of school equip- 
ment. 1 

These ideas about physical culture in the schools will 
appear to many people mere fads, so far removed 
from the sphere of the practical as to be worthy of no 
serious consideration. Let such ponder a few plain 
facts. A few years ago forty children in a Cleveland 
school were organized into a special class to try the 
effects of mouth-hygiene. They were first submitted 
to various mental tests; then their teeth were put in 
order by a dentist, and each was provided with a tooth- 
brush and pledged to use it regularly. Twenty-seven 
of them had persistence enough to maintain the ex- 
periment for a year, at the end of which time the men- 
tal tests were repeated, and showed a gain of 99.8 per 
cent. When we consider that 75 per cent, of our 
school children have physical defects at least as serious 
as bad teeth, and what might be accomplished by syste- 
matic medical inspection and physical culture in over- 
coming these defects, how can anybody question the 
importance of this matter? 

As regards the matter of practicability, an experi- 
ment in four of the public schools of Philadelphia is 
decisive. Mr. Charles Keen Taylor, a former instruc- 
tor in psychology in the University of Pennsylvania, 
organized a club for boys by the simple process of 
showing schoolboys photographs of boys of their own 
age who were well developed. All were naturally 

1 England passed a statute known as a Provision of Meals 
Act, in 1906, and a Medical Inspection Act in 1907. "Report of 
the Commissioner of Education for 1912," vol. I, p. 495. 



142 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

eager to attain a like development. Each boy was 
given a physical examination; if his physique was first- 
class and his class standing good he was given a first- 
class button; fairly good physique and standing en- 
titled him to a second-class button ; while any boy who 
joined the club was entitled to a third-class button. 
Some special privileges were given to all members of 
the league, but every boy wanted to get into the first 
class as quickly as possible. They were given advice 
as to the exercises to take to remedy their defects, and, 
as promotion depended on their success, they did as 
they were told. A regular diet was advised as requi- 
site to the best physical progress, and an early bedtime, 
and they were warned that smoking was especially 
detrimental. 

Tests at the end of a year showed surprising prog- 
ress. Over 80 per cent, of the boys who had smoked 
before entering the club had stopped, and the physical 
progress of all was highly gratifying. Inasmuch as 
the experiment has been conducted at practically no 
cost, without apparatus or playgrounds, the fact that 
the weaklings of this club were started in a single year 
on the road to strength, while the more fit developed a 
high degree of muscular power and endurance, makes 
this one of the most effective object lessons of the 
value and practicability of physical culture for school 
children. 

V 

But it will be of no avail to improve the schools un- 
less the children are free to take advantage of what 



THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD 1 43 

they offer. The ignorance and greed of parents, and 
the intelligence and greed of employers, must not be 
permitted to continue the exploitation of the child. 
The root of the chief evils that constitute the prob- 
lem of the child is Profit. The moment it ceases to be 
profitable to exploit the child he will be given a fair 
chance to enjoy his childhood. There is a very simple 
expedient, that has already been tried in a small way, 
which will dispose of the worst of these evils at a 
blow and with an ease all but ridiculous. A Federal 
statute forbidding the shipping into any other State of 
any goods manufactured by the labor of children un- 
der fourteen or sixteen years would be immediately 
effective. Few factories find profit in manufacturing 
goods to be sold within the State where they are made 
— that is too small a market in these days. The United 
States Supreme Court has passed several times on the 
constitutionality of this principle in legislation, de- 
claring that Congress has the sole right to regulate 
interstate commerce, and any regulations it makes are 
within its discretion and not a matter for judicial in- 
terference. 

But child exploitation in factories is not the only 
way in which the welfare of the child is menaced and 
his rights abridged. In domestic, agricultural, and 
street labor there are abuses quite as great as in fac- 
tories, and thus far there has been little done to regu- 
late them. The need of regulation is shown by the 
census statistics, which make it clear that 75 per cent. 
of child workers fall into these classes, while only 16 
per cent, are in factories. Children of three and four 



144 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

years work by the side of their mothers in hundreds 
of tenements; and children of school age are kept 
from school and employed in tasks beyond their 
strength on thousands of farms. The "bound" boy 
or girl, taken from some charitable institution or from 
the poorhouse, and often treated with less considera- 
tion than the dumb animals, is a feature of many a 
farm. These evils are more delicate to deal with and 
more difficult to cure than the factory, where massing 
of workers together, if it creates some special difficul- 
ties, at least makes the problem of control simpler. 
No suggestion that seems sufficiently practicable has 
yet been made for effectually dealing with domestic 
and agricultural child labor. 

Child labor in the streets is in many respects a worse 
evil than labor in factories. It is hardly less detri- 
mental to health, and far more detrimental to morals. 
It is the more difficult to deal with, because many of 
the workers are not employees, but work directly for 
themselves or their families. This is the case with 
newsboys and, until lately, was the case with boot- 
blacks. 1 Street labor trains these children in all forms 
of mendicancy, dishonesty, and vice. Many of them 
are not so much impelled by need as allured by the lib- 
erty and opportunity for self-indulgence made possible 
through their gains. The economical and ethical de- 

1 Bootblacking is ceasing to be a street industry, but is be- 
coming something even worse through the infamous padrone 
system. Boys (mostly Greeks) are imported for this work, 
and others (mostly Italians) are obtained from the slum dis- 
tricts and exploited by these padrones. In all our large cities 
this is now one of the worst forms of child labor. 



THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD I45 

fects of this form of child labor are almost innumer- 
able, and of the most serious nature. Street labor 
breeds distaste for any regular work, because all street 
occupations are casual and occasional, most of them 
therefore uncertain and all without oversight or disci- 
pline. No training could be worse for children at 
their most susceptible and plastic age. Street occupa- 
tions lead nowhither. The boy grows into the man 
and finds no opening into a man's career; he has, in 
fact, ceased to be a boy without becoming a man. 

Owing to its occasional character, street labor in- 
volves excessive fatigue at times, while it offers exces- 
sive leisure at others; these are conditions favorable 
to dissipation and immorality of many kinds. It com- 
pels exposure to bad weather and so favors resort 
to stimulants. It compels familiarity with vice of 
every kind at an age when ignorance is both bliss and 
safety. A natural result is that a large proportion 
of street workers become vicious and are afflicted with 
venereal diseases, thus becoming centers of infection 
to the whole community. Many become recruits of 
the habitual criminal class, and in later years fill our 
jails and prisons, not to say our asylums and hos- 
pitals. 1 If there were no ethical objections to child 
labor in the streets the economic cost is too high. 

It is objected that the work done by children in the 
streets if done by adults would prove too costly — that 
child labor is an economic necessity. Experience 

'As to what is now attempted for the cure of juvenile delin- 
quency, there is no better source of information than the group 
of reports in the number of the "Survey" for February 5, 1910. 



I46 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

shows, however, that newspapers can be profitably dis- 
tributed by adults, especially by utilizing the services 
of old men and cripples. To do this on a larger scale 
would be to "kill two birds with one stone/' not only 
eliminating the objectionable child labor, but furnish- 
ing profitable employment for a needy class. Experi- 
ence has also shown that men can be profitably em- 
ployed as messengers, instead of boys, and that they 
are more prompt and efficient. The economic argu- 
ment for child labor is but a pretext, and a very weak 
one at that. 

Few States have as yet made any attempt to regu- 
late this form of child labor. New York has a stat- 
ute, but Pennsylvania has none; Massachusetts and 
New Hampshire alone among the New England States 
have acted; and Wisconsin is the only one among the 
older Western communities to attack this problem; 
no Southern State has done anything. The newer 
States, where the need is least, have done most : Okla- 
homa, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada have the best laws. 
The older commonwealths and the richer should blush 
to find themselves surpassed by Utah and Nevada in 
anything that relates to human welfare. Utah and 
Wisconsin alone make the age for street labor as high 
as twelve years; other States content themselves with 
prohibiting boys under ten from engaging in street 
occupations. Practically all make the age limit for 
girls sixteen years, which is more praiseworthy. Still, 
it is apparent that much remains to be done, even in 
States that have done something, before regulation of 



THE PROBLEM OF THE CHILD 1 47 

this form of child labor can be said to be at all satis- 
factory. 

It is charged by some that what has already been 
done in the way of legislation has made the lot of the 
child rather worse than better — that our zeal is so 
little according to knowledge as to make reformers 
more dangerous as friends than employers are as ene- 
mies. It may be so. It almost certainly will be so, 
if reforms are suffered to go singly. Other measures 
of social justice, like a minimum wage for the head of 
the family, compulsory insurance from accident and 
unemployment, and old age pensions, must go hand in 
hand with abolition of child labor, as well as the bet- 
ter provisions for education already outlined, or we 
shall take the child out of the streets and factories 
only to thrust him into the jails and almshouses. We 
must guard lest we attempt to be kind only to be 
cruel. There is grave danger, and we shall do well 
to recognize it, that society, in a blind attempt at re- 
form, may come to practice a brutality greater than 
it now reprehends in the capitalist. 



CHAPTER V 

THE PROBLEM OF THE SLUM 

The slum is the problem of great cities, but it is 
not the problem of all great cities. New York and 
Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia, have slums; Lon- 
don has slums; but the cities of continental Europe 
for the most part have no slums. European cities have 
a housing problem to solve, but not a slum problem. 
The slum is a social disease that may be named Amer- 
icanitis. 

This is an acute problem in American cities for 
many reasons. We have felt to the full the universal 
modern tendency toward urban concentration of popu- 
lation. Immigration has also produced a congestion 
of foreign population in all our large cities, especially 
those on or near the Atlantic seaboard. There has 
been no efficient planning of our cities ; their extension 
into the original suburbs has been the haphazard proc- 
ess of profitable speculation, complicated by all sorts 
of municipal "graft." Until recently, all our cities 
have permitted their people to erect any sort of build- 
ings anywhere, of all kinds of materials, and to main- 
tain for occupation buildings that long since ought to 
have been condemned and torn down. Only our 
larger cities now place any effective restrictions on 
building, and these restrictions are nowhere such as 

148 



THE PROBLEM OF THE SLUM 1 49 

they should be. It is our lack of thought and foresight 
that are chiefly responsible for the existence of the 
slum. Our municipalities live from hand to mouth 
and to educate them to any other method is a slow 
and painful process. 

New York is, of course, the city in which Ameri- 
canitis is most severe. Of the 3,437,202 people in 
Greater New York in 1900, more than two-thirds of 
the whole, or 2,372,079 lived in tenement houses. The 
figures for 19 10 when available will certainly show 
larger numbers, and may show a larger proportion, of 
tenement-dwellers. In 1900 there were 82,652 tene- 
ments in Manhattan and 33,771 in Brooklyn. Of 
course, a large proportion of these, perhaps half, were 
more or less pretentious "apartments" outside of the 
slums, occupied by the rich and well-to-do. Though 
many of these are far from ideal from the sanitary 
point of view, they are occupied by a class who are 
able to look out for themselves, and may be trusted 
to insist on a certain standard of cleanliness and 
health fulness, even if that standard be not always the 
highest. It is the other half, whose poverty compels 
them to take what they can get in the way of habita- 
tions, who must be housed in the slums or not at all, 
whose plight calls for our sympathy and help. What 
is thus true of New York is true in varying degrees of 
all our large cities, and may become true of the small. 



After all, the slum problem, though exceedingly 
grave, is comparatively simple. The slum as it exists 



15© THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

is a complicated affair it is true, and its existence com- 
plicates or intensifies almost every other social problem 
of the great cities, but it has a single cause and may 
be the most easily and quickly cured of all our great 
social ills. For the slum is purely and simply the re- 
sult of bad housing, and the slum may be forever 
eradicated by good housing. On the theoretic side it 
is a problem in engineering and architecture; on the 
practical side it is a problem in finance. There is noth- 
ing mysterious, nothing even difficult, in the terms of 
our problem; we understand it perfectly; further in- 
vestigation or study will increase our knowledge in 
detail, but are not needed for action ; we have come to 
the point where the only requisite is to do something, 
and to do it quickly and well. It is a problem of the 
practical type with which the American genius is pe- 
culiarly fitted to cope. It is, in a word, a business 
man's problem, and the everlasting wonder is that 
Christian business men do not tackle it and get it out 
of the way. If Christianity meant anything to them 
in their business life they surely would. 

The slum has become a moral condition, but it has 
a purely physical cause. Hence we are wasting our 
present efforts to combat it with moral remedies. The 
effective remedy must be, like the cause, physical. 
When we analyze the facts of the slum we come to 
this at the bottom of all : The evils of the slum are 
all traceable to the attempt to house a large population 
in dwellings intended to house a small population. If 
the number of dwellers were limited to the number for 
which the building was planned, there might be un- 



THE PROBLEM OF THE SLUM I5I 

sanitary quarters and unwholesome houses, but not 
the slum. It is the combination of bad housing and 
overcrowding that constitutes the evil, which is thus 
physical in its base, moral in its results. "Five into 
one you can't' ' we used to be told in the arithmetic 
class, but the modern landlord is superior to mathe- 
matics. "Five into one I can" he says, and he does 
it — puts five families into a building constructed for 
hut one family. When this is done through a large 
section of a city, the inevitable result is a slum. Dirt, 
degradation, vice, crime find a congenial residence and 
a safe shelter in the slum. Poverty lives there because 
it has no choice; disease flourishes there because it 
finds ample material to work on and conditions just 
made for it ; vice and crime run to cover there because 
it is an ideal hiding place for those who love darkness 
because their deeds are evil. 

Let us, however, be just to the landlord ; not all the 
evils of the slum, not even all its overcrowding, are 
justly chargeable to him. His reckless and inhuman 
greed is responsible for only part of the overcrowding 
of the slums; the people of the slums ably second his 
efforts. The greed of the landlord is paralleled by 
the greed of his tenants, who sublet their rooms or 
small apartments to lodgers. This is especially true 
of some of our foreign populations, who thus receive 
from lodgers almost or quite enough to pay their own 
rent. Inspectors have found incredible numbers of 
people, of both sexes and all ages, occupying a single 
room. In one home reported, not only was all the 
floor space occupied, but three men slept on the piano ! 



T$2 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

In another three girls, earning an average of $10 a 
week, slept on the floor of a dark closet. The result 
always to the health, and often to the morals, of those 
herded together in this indecent and unsanitary man- 
ner hardly needs to be enlarged upon. That such prac- 
tices should be made not only unlawful but impossible 
cannot be regarded as a question for argument. 

When one says that the slum may be easily de- 
stroyed by providing good housing, one should not be 
understood to say that all the things found in the pres- 
ent slums will immediately disappear. Poverty,, for 
instance, has a much deeper cause than overcrowding, 
and will be far more difficult to cure. The destruction 
of the slum will greatly decrease vice and crime, but 
they will still remain problems to be dealt with. Dis- 
ease would probably be lessened fifty per cent, by the 
removal of the slums, but disease will still present a 
knotty social problem when the slum is gone. As the 
slum is not the sole social evil, or the sole cause of so- 
cial evils, we are to expect progress, not victory, as 
the result of its elimination. It is important that we 
have a clear understanding of what it is fair to ex- 
pect as the result of a successful campaign against the 
slum, or inevitable disappointment awaits us. 

This matter of good housing must be regarded as 
fundamental among our social reforms. Children 
growing up in dark, ill-ventilated, filthy houses cannot 
be expected to reach normal physical development. 
Healthy bodies are possible only amid healthy sur- 
roundings. The school problems that we have already 
had occasion to note are greatly aggravated, if not 



THE PROBLEM OF THE SLUM 1 53 

wholly caused, by the slum. Pupils cannot do their 
school work properly if their vitality is sapped by their 
environment; and they are graduated from the school 
to begin the serious business of life with the double 
handicap of weak body and undeveloped mind. The 
slum is, therefore, an economic blunder of the first 
magnitude. If no ethical considerations were in- 
volved, simply as a matter of dollars and cents, solely 
as a question of industrial efficiency, society cannot af- 
ford so expensive a luxury. The slum diminishes the 
productive capacity of its inhabitants by fully fifty per 
cent. Even America, loudly as we boast of our na- 
tional wealth, is not rich enough to dismiss as trifling 
such a drain on her resources as this. 

There is great danger that anything like adequate 
statements regarding the slum will be looked upon as 
exaggeration by those who have given no attention to 
the matter. And one difficulty in dealing with the sub- 
ject is lack of those precise figures that are so convinc- 
ing to minds of a certain type. The physical effects of 
overcrowding have not been scientifically investigated 
in America, but a careful study has been made in some 
foreign cities, notably in Berlin. It was found there 
that there was a death rate of 163.5 P er i»ooo families 
occupying a single room, 22.5 for families occupying 
two rooms, 7.5 for those who had three rooms, and 5.4 
for those having four or more. That rapidly descend- 
ing scale tells its own story. And yet not all of this 
tremendous difference in death rates can be justly as- 
cribed to the one cause of overcrowding. No small 
part must, of course, be assigned to the general eco- 



154 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

nomic differences between the families investigated. 
A family able to occupy three rooms and pay the rent 
for them would also be able to afford more nourish- 
ing and more abundant food, more and better cloth- 
ing, and probably better nursing and medical care of 
its sick members than a family so poor as to be com- 
pelled to live in one room. Nevertheless, that over- 
crowding vastly increases the death rate, in an inverse 
geometrical ratio to the rooms occupied, is a conclu- 
sion that such figures absolutely compel. 

We should begin the work of housing reform with 
a conviction that housing evils are not necessary. The 
slum is not rooted in the nature of things, inseparable 
from dwelling together in cities. Our present evil 
plight is due to a combination of ignorance, neglect, 
and greed. Even fifty years ago nobody could have 
foreseen the growth of our American cities. Most 
people have heard the story of the city hall in New 
York, and how the wise city fathers voted to have the 
rear walls built of brick, while the rest was of white 
marble, on the ground that the city would never ex- 
tend above that point and so the material of the rear 
wall did not matter. Nobody, therefore, thought of 
the housing problem as a problem; the simple thing 
was to build houses as fast as they were wanted, and, 
as that had always been done, everybody thought that 
always would be done, if he took the trouble to think 
anything about it. And when the matter began to be 
a problem people were too busy and had too little civic 
conscience to do anything about it until the evils be- 
came great and crying. Then, the horse having been 



THE PROBLEM OF THE SLUM 1 55 

stolen, we carefully locked the stable door, after our 
usual habit. 

The slum problem would be much easier of solution 
but for a false civic pride that devotes its energies, 
not to learning facts and applying remedies, but to 
concealing facts and discouraging investigation, on the 
ground that publicity will hurt the town. Things can- 
not be harmful if they are kept hidden, is the con- 
cealed premise of those who thus reason and act. But 
any sound reasoning and policy must be based on an 
exactly contrary premise: that nothing evil can be 
made less evil by concealment, and that publicity is the 
first step toward a remedy. 1 Next to this false civic 
sentiment the most serious obstacle to better housing 
conditions is the apathy of the well-to-do, who, because 
they are comfortable, cannot be roused to the helping 
of others. 

The encouraging feature of the present situation is 
that ignorance is passing away; that apathy and ne- 
glect are giving place to intelligent interest; and that 
greed, if it cannot be shamed into decency, is about to 
be restrained by law. 



II 



In theory, at least, the problem of good housing is 
not complicated. We are sufficiently familiar with bad 

housing surveys and reports now accessible to the public 
have been made in Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Kan- 
sas City (Missouri), Louisville, Philadelphia, St. Louis, San 
Francisco, 



I56 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

housing: those ill-ventilated, ill-lighted, damp build- 
ings miscalled houses, with foul courts and fouler cel- 
lars, with little plumbing and that bad, insufficiently 
supplied with water, with toilet conveniences wholly 
inadequate and often dangerous to the public health, 
reeking with filth and infested with vermin and disease 
germs, which constitute the tenements of our large 
cities. Such buildings are directly or indirectly re- 
sponsible for the major part of industrial inefficiency, 
inebriety, disease, vice, crime, juvenile delinquency, de- 
based citizenship, and race degeneration that afflict 
American society to-day. Why do we tolerate such 
moral pest-houses? Why do we not make it possible 
for even the poorest family to have something worthy 
to be called a home : an apartment suitable to its means 
and size in a well-constructed, well-lighted, well-venti- 
lated building, clean and sanitary, securing to them 
reasonable comfort and privacy, with courts in the 
rear in which there shall be grass and flower-beds and 
playgrounds for the children? 

Some will doubtless reply that one might as well 
expect to see the New Jerusalem come down to earth, 
that those who demand such things are amusing them- 
selves with Utopias that can never have objective 
existence. But the above is a literal, exact descrip- 
tion of what Berlin to-day offers working people. 
Large numbers of model tenements have been erected 
in that city within the last generation, some by munici- 
pal enterprise, some by private, containing no fewer 
than 10,000 apartments. The enterprise has given so 
high satisfaction that it is growing in importance every 



THE PROBLEM OF THE SLUM 1 57 

year. Many of the privately built tenements are co- 
operative, and the tenants own their apartments for 
life and for the lives of their children. These new 
houses are built with sound-proof floors and double 
windows, and each group of apartments is provided 
with cafe, library, assembly-room, and kindergarten. 
Only half of a lot may be occupied by a building, which 
ensures a large central court, with grass-plots, trees, 
sand piles for children, bars, swings and so on. Apart- 
ments are of various sizes, adapted to large families 
or small, and the number of persons that may occupy 
each is strictly limited by law. There is poverty in 
these tenements to be sure, but it is a well-darned, 
well-brushed, well-scrubbed poverty very different 
from that of the slum. And there is very little of vice 
or crime, while disease is reduced to a minimum. Shall 
we go on saying that what is actual in European cit- 
ies is chimerical when proposed for our own? 

It is a condition of good housing in our cities that 
nobody should be permitted to build in the central 
space of its squares; every house should front on a 
street and have assurance of plentiful light and air. 
The back-yard house, or rear tenement, is one of the 
great menaces to public health and morals. Investiga- 
tion of the children brought into the juvenile courts of 
Philadelphia has shown that ninety per cent, of the 
children came from houses of this kind. 1 In the sum- 
mer the temperature is 16 degrees higher in such courts 

1 This statement is made on the authority of Mr. Bernard J. 
Newman, Secretary of the Philadelphia Housing Commission, 
who has specially investigated the question. 



158 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

than on the streets. The effect of these conditions 
on the health of the inmates does not need to be de- 
scribed. The unfortunate tenants pay the price in sick- 
ness and death for these defects in housing. The com- 
munity does not realize what a tax the community as 
a whole is paying in order that a few property owners 
may have the privilege of maintaining such conditions. 

True, one of our chief housing experts, Mr. Law- 
rence Veiller, pronounces the general opinion that rear 
tenements are in themselves bad "an interesting fal- 
lacy," and declares that "there is nothing in the fact 
that the building is located in the rear away from the 
street which makes the house bad in itself." But even 
the opinion of an expert cannot set aside hard facts 
like those quoted above. Mr. Veiller is doubtless right 
in saying that some of the existing rear tenements are 
better habitations than some of those fronting on the 
street. But this does not affect the reason why all 
such buildings should be abolished as soon as possible 
and no more should be built: that it is impossible to 
erect buildings within the squares of our American 
cities and secure to them sufficient light and air to 
make them sanitary. It is true that in many European 
cities it is common to erect buildings in central courts, 
and that many of these are excellent in sanitary char- 
acter. But the squares or "blocks" of these cities are 
larger than ours, and consequently European cities can 
permit what we must forbid. 

About forty years ago, though there was no general 
awakening on the subject, a few people began to per- 
ceive the importance of housing reform, and conceived 



THE PROBLEM OF THE SLUM 1 59 

the idea that private enterprise was quite adequate to 
secure the necessary changes. Their fundamental idea 
was sounder than their method. The old notion had 
been: Make men good and they will better their sur- 
roundings. The new idea was : Better the surround- 
ings and it will be easier to make men good. Both 
ideas are true, and neither is the whole truth. We 
approximate the whole truth, not when we regard our- 
selves as compelled to choose between the two as hos- 
tile alternatives, but when we conceive them as com- 
plementary. Yet here again experience has taught 
us not to expect too much. Model buildings will not 
of themselves make tenants clean in body and mind, 
though model buildings decidedly encourage cleanli- 
ness. The unclean and immoral tenant will still be an 
object of instruction in better ways, and of legal dis- 
cipline if he refuses to reform. 

It was soon discovered that private enterprise was 
not adequate. Not a few of the experiments in model 
buildings were failures from every point of view. 
Some were badly planned, some were extravagantly 
built, some were unwisely managed. On the other 
hand, some were from the first successful, like the 
block of model tenements built by Mr. Alfred T. 
White in Brooklyn, in 1877. In 1896 the City and 
Suburban Homes Company built tenements in New 
York that were entirely successful and paid five per 
cent, on the investment from the beginning. It turned 
out, however, that these object lessons of what might 
be done had little or no influence on the building enter- 
prises of New York and Brooklyn. The ordinary 



l6o THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

commercial builder continued to ask himself, not if 
model tenements were feasible, but if they were as 
profitable as other less costly buildings. Object les- 
sons count for little with those whose end is profit, 
unless it be an object lesson in making money. And 
to the rich men of New York, even those of benevolent 
impulses, "philanthropy and five per cent." did not 
prove an attractive bait. 

In forty years of private enterprise slight progress 
was made toward solution of the housing problem in 
New York. In that time 89 houses were built on the 
"model tenement" plan, with accommodations for 17,- 
940 persons, while during the same time commercial 
builders erected 27,100 tenements, which house 1,267,- 
550 people. It would require a long time, proceeding 
at that rate, to solve the housing problem by private 
enterprise. But in 1901 the legislature passed the first 
statute enacted in the State of New York that exacted 
of builders a fair standard of tenement construction. 
For the first time a sufficiency of light and air was 
prescribed, adequate sanitary arrangements, and suit- 
able precautions against fire, including fireproof stair- 
cases and halls, as well as fire-escapes. In essential 
particulars the houses erected under this act are 
"model" tenements; and since its enactment ordinary 
building enterprise has provided 21,761 houses, with 
room for 1,266,275 people. The experience of New 
York seems to point out to other cities the way in 
which best results may be expected under present con- 
ditions : a statute that will virtually say to builders : 
"You shall not build a house in which people ought not 



THE PROBLEM OF THE SLUM l6l 

to live." Should there be in years to come a marked 
change in the terms on which land is held and im- 
proved, the case might be altered. 



Ill 



We have learned then what we need to do and how 
not to do it. Our chief reliance for housing reform 
must be on wise legislation. Two things must be 
aimed at : abolition of existing buildings unfit for hab- 
itation, and prevention of inadequate building for the 
future. The latter is incomparably the easier task. 
Any city will find it comparatively a simple matter to 
establish building regulations such as will ensure the 
erection of "model" houses for the time to come; and 
exceedingly difficult to undo the mistakes of the past. 
The sooner, therefore, the future is taken in hand and 
made reasonably secure the better for all concerned. 
As a rule, our cities have not sufficient authority to 
enact proper measures for themselves, but must have 
recourse to the legislatures of their States. Here, 
then, is the first objective of effort at reform. 

In several States efforts have been repeatedly made 
to secure a good building law, and their successes and 
failures are instructive for others. The tenement 
problem first pressed in New York, and in 1877 that 
city secured from the State legislature a bill which was 
believed to be a solution of the problem. But, owing 
to the inexperience of those who drafted the statute, 
this law opened the way to some of the worst abuses 



1 62 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

and errors of housing that have ever been known. The 
notorious "dumb-bell" tenements were planned by 
builders so as to comply with the provisions of the 
law but to be more promotive of disease, vice, and 
crime than any of the older "rookeries" that they dis- 
placed. In round numbers 10,000 of these tenements 
were built in New York, containing over 100,000 dark 
rooms, including rooms opening into so-called "air- 
shafts" which admit little air and less light. These 
rooms, into which sunlight can never enter and where 
fresh air is almost unknown, are surcharged with dis- 
ease, and are the abodes of the vicious and the criminal 
as well as of the virtuous and unfortunate poor. They 
send a stream of sick to our hospitals and of criminals 
to our jails and prisons. The respectable and self-re- 
specting workers must live side by side with the vicious 
and the diseased. We have here most effective dem- 
onstration of what has been previously said, that good 
intentions are not sufficient equipment for the would- 
be reformer, that expert knowledge of actual condi- 
tions and effective remedies is indispensable. Legis- 
latures do not possess this; many "reformers" do not 
possess it. Statutes will be worse than useless, they 
are likely to be positively harmful, unless they are 
drawn with help of the best expert aid. 

For the most part, existing statutes are far too lax, 
and, such as they are, they are inadequately enforced. 
In particular, almost nothing is attempted toward the 
demolition of the older and more unsuitable buildings. 
That this is a task beset with many difficulties has al- 
ready been recognized, but that a thing is difficult is 



THE PROBLEM OF THE SLUM 163 

no reason for utter failure to attempt it. As in the 
matter of erecting new buildings, the demolition of 
the old has been left to private enterprise. The ob- 
stacle that prevents progress by this method is the 
same that we encounter when we analyze any of our 
social ills — Profit. The old building is the most lucra- 
tive form of real estate investment, returning often an 
income of fifteen to twenty per cent., while a building 
up to modern requirements would be so comparatively 
costly that the net income would certainly be less than 
ten per cent, and perhaps not over five. The average 
owner cannot be expected to improve his property 
under such circumstances ; it would not be "good busi- 
ness." The moral sentiment of the community, ex- 
pressed in statute, must compel him to act. Such 
statute should not be too drastic. It should prescribe 
a reasonable limit of time within which the improve- 
ment must be made. Recognizing that it has hitherto 
acquiesced in the wrong and so has become a partner 
in the guilt, the city should, in some cases, bear a part 
of the expense or grant a temporary relief from taxa- 
tion that would counterbalance the expense thrown 
on the owner. 

A single type of statute will not serve for all cities, 
because the terms of the housing problem are dif- 
ferent in the small city from those of the large, and 
are by no means the same even in the large cities. New 
York is unique ; it stands in a class by itself. Its physi- 
cal conditions doom it to the tenement house forever, 
because it can house its immense population in no other 
way. But other American cities not only have a small- 



164 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

er population to house, but have practically unlimited 
opportunity to spread in all directions. Given good 
transit facilities, they can distribute their population 
over a wide territory. Hence, in most cities realiza- 
tion of ideal housing is a possibility, and that ideal is 
a separate house for every family. The detached, or 
semi-detached house, in which the greater part of the 
working people of Philadelphia live, for example, is 
duplicated in a large number of American cities and 
should be characteristic of all. There is no difficulty 
in building such houses, in ample numbers to supply 
the demand, by private enterprise; and, for the most 
part, there is little fault to be found with their sani- 
tary condition. Their rents also, though probably 
higher than they should be, are not exorbitant. 
Through the aid of building and loan cooperative so- 
cieties many thousands of workers have been able to 
buy their houses and be their own landlords. 

It is, therefore, a clear municipal duty to provide 
rapid transit to suburbs, or at least to see that it is 
provided. Without such provision the ideal solution 
of the housing problem cannot be regarded as within 
the bounds of possibility. The worker must live near 
his work; we must accept that as one absolute datum 
of our problem. But nearness has come to be a mat- 
ter of time rather than of space. For the rich man 
with his automobile, the suburb is to-day nearer his 
office than his city house used to be; and the result is 
that, more and more, the rich are living in the suburbs 
and deserting the cities. Rapid transit puts the poor 
man on a level with the rich in this access to his work, 



THE PROBLEM OF THE SLUM 1 65 

and so the poor man can also live in a suburb. What- 
ever may be the policy of society in the future toward 
all means of transportation, its present attitude toward 
city and suburban railways should no longer be doubt- 
ful. Whatever private enterprise is unable or unwill- 
ing to undertake, our municipalities must supply. This 
is no more than organized society owes to the units 
that compose it. And if our present municipal ma- 
chinery lacks either courage or intelligence to attack 
this problem and deal with it successfully it must be 
swept out of existence and something more effective 
must be devised and put in its place. For this slum 
problem is literally a question of life or death; the 
cities must conquer the slums or the slums will con- 
quer the cities. 

In cities where tenement houses, few or many, must 
be built, a few general principles should control their 
erection. The health and safety of the dwellers should 
be the first consideration. It would be injudicious to 
accept the suggestion of some and require all such 
buildings to be of fireproof construction. If building 
is made too costly it will cease altogether and, as a re- 
sult, the housing problem will become more acute than 
ever. Slow-burning construction would suffice, all 
halls and staircases to be of iron and stone or brick, 
with adequate fire escapes as an additional security 
against fire. A minimum size of rooms should be pre- 
scribed; every room should have a window opening 
either on the street or on an open court of prescribed 
size. The plumbing should be of the best, the water 
supply abundant, and toilet facilities adequate for 



l66 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

cleanliness and decency. Experience shows that not 
all desirable details need be prescribed. Though the 
New York tenement law of 1901 prescribed only a 
private toilet for each apartment, 85 per cent, of the 
houses built under that act provide a bathroom also. 
Overcrowding should be prevented by a limitation of 
the number that may occupy each room and apart- 
ment. The cost and labor of inspection, in order to 
enforce all these details, may, in large part, be reduced 
by throwing responsibility on the landlords. They and 
their agents know better than anybody else whether 
the legal requirements are observed in their houses, 
and a suitable penalty for violation would stimulate 
them to considerable vigilance. 

Inasmuch as the back yard has practically disap- 
peared from our large cities, the question of housing 
reform is directly connected with another important 
municipal question : the providing of suitable and ade- 
quate parks and playgrounds. Both children and 
adults need such provision, but the children most of 
all. Chicago has lately spent $13,000,000 on play- 
grounds, and that city never made a better investment 
in its history. More than 18,000 of the youth of the 
town are organized in athletic clubs, and the results 
to the health of the city and the productive power of 
the people are out of all proportion to the amount of 
the investment. 

IV 

We must by no means pass by suggestions and plans 
for the relief of congested population in our cities, 



THE PROBLEM OF THE SLUM 167 

which would, of course, greatly simplify the slum 
problem. Our newer Western communities, where the 
problem is less urgent, might well go to school to 
Australia and learn how to do it. Several years ago 
a world-wide competition for designs of a proposed 
new capital city was instituted, and in 19 12 the first 
award was given to a Chicago architect and landscape 
gardener. This is of itself guarantee that we have 
brains and skill available to solve all our problems. 
The new Australian capital is to be located in a fed- 
eral tract of 900 square miles, much like our District 
of Columbia. The plan adopted was evidently sug- 
gested by Major L'Enfant's design for the city of 
Washington, but modified to suit the conditions. The 
city will be built around two lakes, connected by an 
ornamental waterway, the whole forming an irregular 
body of water some eight miles long and from a quar- 
ter of a mile to two miles wide. Four distinct quar- 
ters or districts are set oft": for a government center, 
a residential section, a manufacturing section, and a 
suburban or semi-agricultural district. Each of these 
has its own center — a park and public buildings — with 
avenues radiating thence like spokes from a hub, and 
streets of parallelogram arrangement. Nothing could 
make a stronger appeal at once to the eye and to the 
imagination. In such a city congestion and over- 
crowding will forever be impossible. In the matter of 
the slum, an ounce of prevention is worth a ton of 
cure. 

As to the older cities, the Honorable James T. 
Bryce — it does not seem right to call him viscount — 



1 68 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

former ambassador from England, one of the most 
profound students of things American, in an address 
delivered not long before his departure from our 
shores, made a suggestion of much value. He de- 
clared the true municipal ideal to be cities of 150,000 
people. He said the country would be more prosper- 
ous and happy if the manufacturer with a plant to 
erect would take it away from the great centers and 
place it in the heart of the country, where a garden 
city would form around it, and where workers and 
all classes of individuals could lead a normal and 
healthful life. 

Mr. Bryce probably meant that much more should 
be done than has been done along this line; for he 
could not be ignorant of the fact that some experi- 
ments have been made, though not with the most en- 
couraging results. The town of Pullman, on the out- 
skirts of Chicago, was established on precisely Mr. 
Bryce's principle by the corporation of that name. It 
was and is a model town, a veritable garden city, with 
broad streets, beautiful parks, perfectly built and ap- 
pointed houses — a place, in short, 

Where every prospect pleases 
And only man is vile. 

In fact, man was very vile there. The exorbitant 
rents charged by the corporation for houses, the 
equally exorbitant prices exacted by the corporation 
stores, and the generally tyrannical management of the 
property, first provoked one of the greatest strikes of 



THE PROBLEM OF THE SLUM 1 69 

our history and later led to the incorporation of the 
town into the city of Chicago. Its people preferred 
the disadvantages of one of the most corrupt city gov- 
ernments in the world to longer endurance of the pa- 
ternal kindness of the Pullman corporation. 1 

The Krupps have established a similar town in con- 
nection with their great works at Essen, the Pittsburgh 
of Germany. The streets are wide and clean, parks and 
trees abound, and this firm has had enough enlightened 
selfishness to build a sufficient number of one-family 
houses to provide for the workers, and to charge them 
a lower rent than private landlords at Essen formerly 
demanded. A garden colony, named AltenhofT, has 
also been established, in which the retired and infirm 
workers live free of rent. There are, in addition, hos- 
pitals, sanatoriums, and other helpful institutions. 

But possibly Mr. Bryce's suggestion was prompted 
less by what he may have seen or read in the United 
States or Germany than by the experience of his own 
country. Lever Brothers, makers of soap, have es- 
tablished a garden city as a suburb of Liverpool. Port 
Sunlight occupies an area of 230 acres and was 
planned by an expert, who made skilful use of the 
natural features of the location. Roads, parks, and 
public buildings are the best of their kind. The cot- 
tages for workers, instead of the usual monotony, dis- 

1 The United Steel Corporation is in process of establishing a 
model town at Gary, Ind., but, though several pictorial and 
laudatory accounts of its progress have been published, there 
is a singular lack of any vital information. It is impossible, at 
present, to form any intelligent opinion regarding what has been 
accomplished for the well-being of the workers. 



I70 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

play considerable diversity of style. Ample play- 
grounds and athletic facilities are as prominent fea- 
tures of the city as church, library, or art gallery. The 
rents charged are merely sufficient to keep the property 
in good repair and maintain the community institu- 
tions, the company making no profit from an invest- 
ment of $2,500,000, finding its sufficient returns in the 
increased welfare and efficiency of its workers. They 
recognize that "business cannot be carried on by physi- 
cally deficient employees any more than war can be 
successfully waged by physically deficient soldiers. " 
This is one of the most enlightened enterprises of its 
kind anywhere in the world. 

But this is so wholly exceptional a garden city, be- 
cause of the exceptional social intelligence of its 
founders, as to weaken very slightly the conclusion that 
private enterprise cannot be expected to make a con- 
tribution of much value to the housing problem. Port 
Sunlight is almost solitary among proprietary cities 
in being what it pretends to be. Most towns of the 
kind, under pretense of philanthropy, have been a mere 
means of skinning the workers. Not content with ex- 
ploiting them in the factory, corporations have made 
their towns an additional means of exploitation, in 
rent, food and everything they could control. With an 
ingenuity almost more than human, that may without 
prejudice be called diabolical, they have made these 
fair-seeming enterprises the means of stealing from 
helpless workers the last possible percentage of their 
product, all the while with unctuous hypocrisy making 
loud pretenses of benevolence and goodwill. Long 



THE PROBLEM OF THE SLUM 171 

before capitalists as a class could be raised to the plane 
of mental and ethical eminence of Lever Brothers, 
capitalism will have ceased to be. 

The most hopeful results, up to the present, both in 
England and in Germany, have been reached where 
the garden city has not been a humanitarian enterprise, 
but has been established on ordinary business princi- 
ples. Of several such towns a good representative is 
Letchworth, near London. It is a cooperative affair, 
the profits being limited to five per cent. It occupies 
a tract of nearly 4,000 acres, and has grown in a few 
years to a population of 7,000. It is laid out on the 
plan of an English country village ; streets and houses 
are of great variety; generous provision has been made 
for athletic sports and numerous community buildings 
are provided. 

Little has been done as yet in England by direct 
municipal action toward the establishment of garden 
cities, but much has been done in Germany, within a 
very short time. The first city of the kind was Hel- 
lerau, begun in 1909 as a private enterprise, and now 
cooperative under municipal oversight. It occupies a 
tract of 345 acres near Dresden, and its growth from 
the beginning has been remarkable. The city is care- 
fully laid out with regard to artistic effect, and the 
carrying out of the idea is secured by having a com- 
mission pass on all architects' plans. The success of 
Hellerau has stimulated other cities to undertake like 
suburbs, among them Niirnberg and Munich. The 
German ideal of a garden city is a suburban town sys- 
tematically planned, either now or ultimately to be 



172 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

owned by the municipality. This discourages specula- 
tion in land and ensures that the increment of value 
shall accrue to the community. 

The garden city naturally commends itself to those 
who look for quick results, because it is indisputably 
an easier project than remaking an old city. But, 
while the new suburban town may thus be made to 
do something of value in providing for the housing of 
thousands, other thousands must still remain in the 
great cities. The garden city is a palliative, very use- 
ful, quite hopeful, but at best only palliative; it is no 
cure for the slum. The larger cities will continue to 
exist; in all probability they will grow even larger, 
and we must learn how to live under these conditions. 
The city must be rebuilt; the slum must go. 



It is just here that another experience of Germany 
becomes of great value for us. 1 We have not entirely 
outgrown that arrogance of spirit which led an Ameri- 
can Senator of a past generation to ask: "What have 
we to do with 'abroad'?" We no longer flatly deny 
that Europe can teach us, but we are not yet very 
eager to learn lessons from that quarter. Nevertheless, 
it will be well for us to realize that some European 
countries have anticipated us in dealing with social 

1 For many of the facts in IV and V of this chapter I am 
indebted to Howe's "European Cities at Work," but personal 
observation confirms the facts related under V. 



THE PROBLEM OF THE SLUM I73 

problems, and in particular have so treated the slum 
that it is rapidly vanishing. 

Up to 1870 there was no country more backward 
than Germany in treatment of the slum problem. 
Nothing had been done since the Middle Ages to im- 
prove German cities. They had certain advantages 
over us, however, for dealing with the housing of their 
people. The very age of their towns guaranteed the 
existence of a civic pride that we have not had time 
to develop. Their governments and citizens were 
more accustomed to a paternal policy than ours. Ac- 
cordingly, the leading citizens and men of business 
took the matter in hand and have continued to manage 
it. What would have happened had any American 
city been turned over to its bankers and merchants 
and manufacturers to do with it as they chose? They 
would have grabbed every franchise in sight, stolen 
everything not nailed down, and generally exploited 
their fellow-citizens to the utmost, to swell their own 
private fortunes. That is precisely what they have 
done, so far as they were able, so far as they could 
control city governments. But the business men of 
German cities did differently ; under their management 
a policy of municipal socialism has been pushed far. 
They have reversed the American method, which is 
for the community to keep and operate all enterprises 
that are unprofitable and onerous, and turn over to pri- 
vate parties for exploitation everything that is profit- 
able. The German cities keep the profitable enterprises 
for the community, if they concern the community. 

The housing question was regarded as an insepa- 



174 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

rable part of the development of a German city. And 
so it was not left, as among us, to private enterprise 
and haphazard municipal ordinances. In every case 
they have done what only a single American city has 
even contemplated — of course, only Washington can 
be meant — and planned the town for generations to 
come. It will be an easy task in future years to pro- 
ject these plans to any desired extent and preserve 
the unity of design as the town grows. Washington 
is the one really beautiful city in America, but Ger- 
many abounds in beautiful towns. Usually a public 
competition has preceded the adoption of a plan, to 
which the best engineers and architects have contrib- 
uted their ideas. Once a choice has been made it has 
been adhered to, with only such modifications as ex- 
perience has suggested. 

As already intimated, a generation ago German cit- 
ies were no more ready than other towns to house the 
people who began to pour into them. But they awoke 
to the situation ; American cities continued to sleep. 
German cities, with hardly an exception, were still con- 
tained within the old mediaeval walls ; the streets were 
narrow, the houses small and unsanitary. The walls 
were razed, save here and there portions preserved 
for historic association or picturesque effect ; the moats 
were filled; and these spaces were turned into boule- 
vards, parks, and walks. In the old city many build- 
ings have been torn down and rebuilt, scrupulous care 
being taken to preserve the ancient architectural 
forms ; some streets have been widened, and the whole 
much improved. But, of course, the greatest effect 



THE PROBLEM OF THE SLUM Ijfjf 

has been obtained in the extension of the city beyond 
the old walls on the new plans adopted. 

While private enterprise has been permitted and en- 
couraged to undertake as much as it chose, there has 
been no hesitation to make the city itself the leader 
in this movement. Ulm, a city of 56,000 people in 
Wurttemberg, has bought up land so extensively that 
it now owns 80 per cent, of the area of the town and 
suburbs, amounting to nearly 5,000 acres. Out of 
this a large woodland has been reserved for recreation. 
Industries are confined to certain districts — something 
that no American city has even attempted to do. The 
city itself has built 175 houses, and leases ground for 
others to build for seventy years, agreeing to buy back 
the houses at the expiration of the lease for 80 per 
cent, of their cost. As municipal ordinances strictly 
control the type of house to be erected, this is a safe 
offer to make. Nor is Ulm alone in such enterprise; 
Munich owns 23.7 per cent, of the property within 
its limits, Leipzig 23.3 per cent., Strassburg 33.2, Han- 
nover, 27-7- Outside the city limits most towns own 
much more land than within; Berlin, for example, 
owns in the suburbs more than twice the whole city 
area, and Strassburg almost three times. 

Frank furt-am-Main is one of the most progressive 
cities of Germany, and by consequence one of the most 
beautiful. The municipality owns one-half of the area 
within its limits, and 3,800 acres outside, making a 
total of 16,600 acres. Its broad streets, scrupulously 
clean, its numerous well-kept parks, make it an ex- 
ceedingly attractive town. The city owns and oper- 



I76 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

ates its street railways, electric light and water works, 
leaving the gas supply to private enterprise. It was 
the first German city to tax the unearned increment, 
but most other cities followed its example and in 191 1 
the principle was adopted in imperial taxation. The 
problem of municipal finance hardly exists for Frank- 
furt, or any of the German cities. What is not pro- 
duced by regular revenue for improvements they have 
had no difficulty in borrowing on bonds at a low inter- 
est rate. Like all other German towns situated on 
rivers or seaports, Frankfurt owns its docks and har- 
bor facilities, managed in harmony with the imperial 
government, which controls the means of transporta- 
tion. 

Diisseldorf may be taken as an example of the 
smaller cities of Germany, not so much visited by 
tourists, and of no great industrial or commercial im- 
portance. This town operates practically all municipal 
enterprises : gas, electric light, street railways, water. 
Lighting, either by gas or electricity, costs less than 
in most German towns, yet a handsome revenue is de- 
rived from this source for public purposes. The street 
railways charge a fare just half that of American 
lines, and are profitable at that. Cars are provided 
that resemble a pullman coach, or a magnate's private 
car, more than the miserable contraptions that we 
Americans submit to be carried in. The city has un- 
dertaken large operations in land, in order to check 
private speculation and keep down prices. It not only 
erects houses for workingmen, but has established a 
municipal bank and pawnshop for their benefit, and 



THE PROBLEM OF THE SLUM 1 77 

maintains a system of insurance against sickness, acci- 
dent, and old age. Many of these things have no 
immediate relation to the matter we are considering, 
the housing problem. They are interesting, however, 
as showing that, in the experience of Diisseldorf, the 
attempt to accomplish one kind of social betterment 
is very likely to lead to another. The housing prob- 
lem and the beautifying of the city mark the begin- 
ning, not the end, of the modern municipal activity of 
Diisseldorf. It has done somewhat less than some 
others in constructing garden cities in the suburbs, 
because the whole town has been transformed into 
what well deserves to be given that name. There is 
not another more beautiful city in Europe to-day. 

With straighter streets, wider streets, streets less 
crowded and better policed, German cities have better 
transit facilities than American. The cars make less 
frequent stops and run much faster with more safety 
to the people than with us. The parcels post also 
gives great aid to the solution of the housing prob- 
lem, and quite as much to reduce the high cost of liv- 
ing. The middleman is largely eliminated : direct 
from producer to consumer is more and more the rule, 
especially with food products. The public market 
does the rest. The butcher shop and the grocery store 
fill a small place in the life of a German town; one 
may travel miles, especially in the suburbs, and never 
see either. Germany has entirely solved neither the 
housing problem nor the living problem, but she has 
attacked both with a vigor and intelligence that con- 
trast painfully with our sleepy stupidity, and she is in 



178 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

a fair way to reach passable solutions before we get 
waked up enough to make any real effort. 

One item in Germany's procedure is instructive, as 
a lesson in regard to the way in which social questions 
are interlocked; so that to do anything of value has 
more than one good effect. A generation ago Bis- 
marck devised a system of workingmen's insurances 
and pensions, as he openly avowed, to "dish" the 
Socialists. He effectually dished, not the Socialists, 
but himself, for the Socialist vote increased thereafter 
more rapidly than before. But the system was not 
half bad ; it was, of course, a palliative, and slight at 
that, but it was better than nothing, and so far as it 
went the Socialists could not and did not object to it 
on principle. But, after thirty years or so, the funds 
accumulated for that purpose became an embarrass- 
ment; it was necessary to find some safe and moder- 
ately profitable investment for them. There is no 
safer investment than real estate, and so these funds 
have been freely used to solve the housing problem. 
Model tenements have been erected by their aid and 
pay a fair interest on the capital invested in them, 
which can be used to pay the insurances and pensions 
that fall due. It is said that one of our insurance cor- 
porations, the Metropolitan Life, has adopted a simi- 
lar method of investment, advancing money for erect- 
ing tenements, controlling the type of building and 
regulating its occupation, thus supplying excellent 
homes at moderate cost. If more of the funds of life 
insurance companies were invested in similar manner, 
instead of loaned for gambling on the stock exchange, 



THE PROBLEM OF THE SLUM 1 79 

there would be less complaint of the companies and 
marked advance toward solution of the housing prob- 
lem. 



VI 



It has already been pointed out that the slum ques- 
tion is at bottom a question of finance, and a hint has 
also been given of the method by which the problem 
may easily be solved. German cities have shown us; 
some of the newer Canadian communities have shown 
us. So long as the chief burden of taxation falls on 
improvements, building will be delayed and land spec- 
ulation will be encouraged. An owner of an unim- 
proved city lot can now hold it, while the city builds 
walks and sewers and paves streets, for which he usu- 
ally pays only a relatively small tax, until the rise in 
value of his property satisfies his greed and he is will- 
ing to sell to some one who will erect a building upon 
it. When the building is erected, a relatively heavy 
tax is levied on it, and the better the building the 
heavier the tax. We thus offer a high inducement to 
owners and builders to build in the cheapest and flim- 
siest manner possible, and to maintain an old building 
as long as it will stand, rather than pull it down and 
erect a better. When we become socially intelligent 
enough to remove our taxes from buildings and levy 
them on land values, we shall no longer be guilty of 
selecting out the most enterprising and thrifty of the 
people and fining them for every contribution they 
make to our progress and general welfare. 



l8o THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

Taxing the unearned increment, besides being ethi- 
cally just, is, therefore, socially wise. 1 As this incre- 
ment is more and more taken for public use, other 
forms of taxation will be found unnecessary. Land 
speculation will be first lessened, then destroyed, as 
the motive for holding unimproved land becomes in- 
operative. The builder being no longer penalized for 
his enterprise, more beautiful and durable construction 
can be afforded and the quality of buildings, both pub- 
lic and private, may be expected to rise rapidly. It 
will probably be advisable to prescribe a minimum 
standard of construction, but builders in general will 
often, if not always, find it profitable to exceed this. 

The slum is generally regarded as a problem of large 
cities only ; and for convenience it has been so treated 
in this discussion; but the discussion should not close 
without at least an intimation that this assumption 
does not altogether correspond with fact. Cities of 
the second and third classes already have this prob- 
lem to deal with, and their future growth is likely to 
make it pressing. Even towns of 25,000 population 
and under are not so free from the slum problem as 
they may complacently think themselves to be. Not 
a few of the smaller towns have had a painful awaken- 

1 The objection that it would be impossible to value land 
with sufficient accuracy to afford a basis for equitable taxation 
is shown by experience to be, like so many objections to so- 
cially progressive measures, quite unfounded. So far from dif- 
ficult to estimate accurately, land values are the easiest of all 
values to ascertain with accuracy. The census of 1900 separately 
valued farm lands and improvements. New York, Boston and 
other cities have made valuations of the land within their limits. 



THE PROBLEM OF THE SLUM l8l 

ing of late to realization that there are shameful hous- 
ing conditions within their limits. They are awaken- 
ing to the fact that unless they face these conditions 
and at once provide better housing they will soon have 
to contend with all the evils of the great cities, on a 
smaller scale to be sure, but the same in quality. Wise 
action in New York in 1830, or even in 1850, would 
have prevented that city's difficulties. To-day is the 
day of salvation for the smaller towns. 

There is no social problem in which Christian people 
ought to be more deeply interested than the slum prob- 
lem. There is no problem to which the Gospel of 
Jesus is more vitally related. For the home is the 
foundation of society, and in the slum we see what 
capitalism has done to the home. The progress of the 
Gospel is inseparably bound up with the maintenance 
of the home. A Christian society is under straitest 
obligation, for its own preservation and progress, to 
see that the homes of all its members, poor as well as 
rich, so long as there must be poor and rich, are made 
habitable. To neglect this is social suicide. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE PROBLEM OF VICE 



""The oldest profession in the world" is no longer 
a profession but a business. It has always been pur- 
sued for gain, of course, but the gains were once 
small and accrued to the scarlet woman herself. Now 
vice has felt the influence of the age and has become 
commercialized; and, finally, it has succumbed to the 
irresistible tendency and has become a trust. We 
call this form of vice the "social evil" and we do 
well, for it is the sin of society, not of the individual 
alone. "The wages of prostitution," says George 
Bernard Shaw to the people of England, "are stitched 
into your buttonholes and into your blouse, pasted into 
your matchboxes and your boxes of pins, stuffed into 
your mattress, mixed with the paint on your walls, 
and stuck between the joints of your water pipes. The 
very glaze on your basin and teacup has in it the lead 
poison that you offer to the decent woman as the re- 
ward of honest labor, while the procuress is offering 
chicken and champagne." 

We call these poor creatures that walk our streets 
offering themselves for sale "fallen women," but the 

183 



THE PROBLEM OF VICE 1 83 

truth is that the whole community has fallen with 
them. We who sit smug and self-satisfied at our vir- 
tuous firesides are partners in this traffic; we are en- 
joying the rewards of a system of which they are an 
inseparable part. They have been ground into the 
dirt in order that our womenfolk may be kept spot- 
less. It is for us, therefore, as well as for them, to 
weep and repent our fault, and go and sin no more. 

There are people who will deeply resent these words 
as they read them, and the depth of their resentment 
measures the necessity for speaking such words, and 
even harsher. For the criminal hypocrisy of the moral 
part of the comumnity is responsible for the great ex- 
tent of this frightful evil. Among the good and re- 
ligious people of this world there is a vast quantity 
of what Dickens named Podsnappery. Mr. Podsnap, 
it will be remembered, had a way of disposing of dis- 
agreeable facts by a flourish of his arm, sweeping 
them behind him, with : "I don't want to know about 
it; I don't choose to discuss it; I don't admit it." The 
"good" men and women, and even the bad men and 
women who would be thought good, have insisted that 
this matter should never be mentioned above a whis- 
per. Not a word must be openly spoken or written 
about it — veiled allusions and decorous phrases were 
the utmost admissible. It is only recently that it has 
been discovered to be possible to discuss the problem of 
vice with all necessary plainness, yet without coarse- 
ness. 

This policy of finger-on-lip and sh-h-h-h! has been 
tried long and has proved a complete failure. The no- 



184 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

tion that women and young people must be kept in a 
state of blessed innocence (by which we really mean 
a state of ignorance that is often far from blessed) 
and permit only men, and "men of the world" at that, 
to know the facts, is so at variance with reality as to 
be absurd beyond words. When our women and our 
young people cannot go upon our streets, cannot read 
a daily newspaper, without having the facts in their 
grossest form thrust upon them, why keep up this 
vain pretense of "innocence" ? Our conduct is mere 
prudishness, and has become one of the chief obstacles 
in the way of solution of our problem. It is also one 
of the things upon which the people of the underworld 
chiefly rely, and not in vain. This very ignorance, mis- 
called innocence, is one cause of the fall of thousands 
of young women every year. If they knew the pitfalls 
that surround them they would be on guard. Turn 
on the light, then; only vice itself has anything to fear 
from it. 

But it is not merely the hypocrisy of prudishness, 
it is the hypocrisy of fear, that strives to put the ta- 
boo on discussion. Nearly every social ill from 
which we suffer is discovered to have its roots in capi- 
talism. If investigation and discussion should make 
it clear that vice is nothing else than a part of the price 
that the great multitudes of toilers are paying to main- 
tain in luxury an exploiting class, a tremendous impulse 
will be given to the demand that capitalism shall cease. 
Realizing this, the capitalistic class and all its adhe- 
rents strive to hide from view the sores of society for 
which it is responsible, and so far as possible to deny 



THE PROBLEM OF VICE 1 85 

their very existence. And often a red herring is drawn 
across the trail by fussy "investigations" by "commis- 
sions" that do not investigate, and elaborate "reports" 
that carefully avoid telling anything but surface facts. 
One of the richest of our younger multi-millionaires 
has financed a pretentious "scientific" investigation; 
and every now and then the laboring mountains bring 
forth a ridiculous mouse. 

If the inevitable penalties of vice fell only upon the 
guilty we might possibly continue to look on with self- 
ish equanimity and see the guilty suffer. But society 
has awakened to the truth of the Gospel that no man 
liveth to himself, that if one member suffers all the 
members suffer with him. Science confirms Scripture 
that the sins of the guilty are often visited on the 
innocent. Not only the women who voluntarily 
choose vice instead of virtue are dragged down to hell, 
but the daughters of our sheltered homes become the 
victims of those foul beasts of prey, the recruiting of- 
ficers of the underworld. Nobody can longer be sure 
that his own family is immune from this frightful 
curse. Not only do men who love impurity more than 
purity pay the cost of their indulgence in venereal dis- 
ease, but they become sources of infection to innocent 
women and children. Not only is the underworld 
putrid with these diseases, but it is rapidly passing on 
the infection to the upper world. Careful examina- 
tions and estimates by the best qualified men of science 
warrant the belief that twelve per cent, of the entire 
population of London and Berlin are afflicted with 
syphilis, and fifteen per cent, of the population of 



1 86 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

Paris. Our great cities are probably no better and pos- 
sibly worse. In sheer self-defense, if it would avoid 
universal contamination of blood, society is now 
forced to deal with this problem more effectively than 
it has ever yet dreamed of doing. 

Our governments, Federal and State, expend mil- 
lions every year in exterminating insect pests that 
threaten the farmer's crop, and other millions in the 
prevention and cure of diseases that attack the farm- 
er's stock. Research stations and agricultural colleges 
are studying these problems and are rapidly finding so- 
lutions for them. This is part of our campaign of con- 
servation, and is mentioned by way of praise, not of 
criticism. Criticism should be directed to another 
point : for this problem of vice that vitally concerns 
the interests of society, that attacks the very root of 
social institutions, the family, that threatens the life 
and happiness of millions of our people — for this gov- 
ernments have no thought, spend no money. What 
has been accomplished thus far has been due to private 
enterprise ; and, naturally, it has only skimmed the sur- 
face of things. Investigations financed by the very 
class that maintains the evil cannot be expected to 
bring forth truth, at least not the whole truth. Yet, 
superficial as the investigations have been, and feebly 
palliative as are the remedies proposed, we have 
learned much — all that we really need to know for 
immediate effective action. 

We have learned, to begin with, that the condition 
society has to face is this : Vice of all kinds, and 
especially sexual vice, the most formidable of all, is 



THE PROBLEM OF VICE 1 87 

a great commercial system, in which large capital is 
invested, and from which immense revenues are de- 
rived. It is not only vice but greed that we have to 
fight. Mr. Samuel H. London, a government vice in- 
vestigator, estimates that there are 63,000 white slaves, 
whose "earnings" are $188,000,000 annually. The 
Rockefeller Bureau of Social Hygiene, in its first re- 
port of its work during 1912, gives, as a conservative 
estimate of the number of prostitutes in the borough 
of Manhattan, 15,000; and says that a large number 
of resorts are operated as a trust or "combine," con- 
trolled by a group of about fifteen men. The same 
facts, on a smaller scale, would be discovered by sim- 
ilar investigation of any of our large cities, and to a 
considerable degree they exist in our smaller towns. 
We need no exact, scientific statistics to convince us 
of the extent and enormity of the evil. 

We have also learned that in every American city 
of any considerable size, and in most of the smaller 
towns as well, there is a secret league between the 
municipal authorities and those who conduct this vile 
business. Vice is under the ban of the law, and it 
is the duty of the police to suppress it. Instead of 
making any effort to do so they give the business their 
protection, in return for a regular tax levied by them 
and as regularly paid. From this "graft" police of- 
ficials heap up fortunes, while a considerable part goes 
to maintain the corrupt political machines of our great 
cities. Gambling, another form of vice, is commercial- 
ized in a similar way and receives like protection. The 
saloon owes its ability to violate with impunity all 



1 88 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

license laws to the same source. All these forces 01 
evil are so interlocked and so intrenched within our 
present municipal systems and laws as to be impreg- 
nable for the present. Society is powerless to deal 
with them until it can effect fundamental reforms in 
government. Every little while there is an "exposure" 
with great display of "scare heads" in the newspapers; 
but it exposes nothing that every intelligent person did 
not know before, and it leads to nothing. Once in a 
decade or so there is some notorious crime, like the 
Rosenthal murder, which brings the underworld into 
the lime light for a few weeks, and may lead to a 
brief moral spasm in the community, and may even 
result in the conviction of a criminal or two. But none 
of these things affects vice in any appreciable degree. 
It does not make a dent in the system. Men may 
come and men may go, but the system goes on forever. 
And it will go on forever, unless society — which 
means all of us — ceases its fooling with the symptoms 
of this social disease and goes to the root of the mat- 
ter, seeks out the cause and removes it. This is a per- 
fectly simple thing to do, though very difficult. For 
there is practical unanimity among investigators of our 
social conditions, so far as they have courage to speak 
out, that poverty is the great cause of sexual vice, as 
it exists among us to-day. Young girls are not in- 
herently vicious, and very few of them choose this 
life of shame because they love it. They are literally 
driven to it, or tempted beyond their power of re- 
sistance, or decoyed and forced into it. The greed 
of those who have commercialized the business and 



THE PROBLEM OF VICE 1 89 

the need of those who enter it are the two grand fac- 
tors of our problem, beside which any others are 
negligible. 

II 

Possibly it is too cavalier a disposal of the question 
of the cause of vice to attribute it so exclusively to 
poverty. There is no intent to deny that other causes 
contribute to swell an evil of which poverty is the 
fundamental cause. Ignorance ranks high among 
these contributory causes, and its ill effects are not 
limited to the encouragement that it gives to all forms 
of harmful indulgence. The price that society is pay- 
ing for ignorance is even greater than the price paid 
for vice. On the theory that it is not "nice" or 
"proper" for young people to know the fundamental 
facts of sex, the origin of life, the dangers of vice, 
they have been kept in as much ignorance as possible. 
It has not been possible to keep them in total igno- 
rance, but much of the knowledge that they manage 
surreptitiously to acquire is warped and misleading. 
In our anxiety that they should not be given right 
information we have brought it about that they have 
obtained much misinformation. We ought to be proud 
of our achievement! 

On the contrary, we are becoming somewhat 
ashamed of it, and are beginning to recognize the 
necessity of sex education and sex hygiene. As a 
consequence of this awakening it has been seriously 
proposed that elementary instruction should be given 



I9O THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

in our public schools, and a few tentative experiments 
have been made in that direction. The ideal thing 
would, of course, be instruction by parents; but since 
so many parents are restrained by a false sense of 
shame from performing this duty, and since so many 
others are incompetent to perform it, and since in any 
case so many children will certainly fail to receive any 
parental instruction, some provision will eventually 
have to be made in public education. The difficulty 
at present is that few teachers have knowledge and 
training that fit them to give such instruction. And 
in country districts, where teachers are mainly girls 
only just out of school themselves, it can hardly be 
considered desirable that they should undertake such 
work. It cannot be said that any satisfactory solution 
of this part of our problem is yet in sight, but we shall 
doubtless find one if we search with determination to 
find. 

Another contributing cause of the extensive preva- 
lence of vice is the double standard of morals. Dr. 
Homer Clark Bennett has put this very cleverly in 
some verses, which, if not great poetry, are great 
sense : 

If the prodigal boy had been a girl, 

How would the story have run? 
Would the fatted calf have been killed as quick 

For the daughter as for the son? 
Would the welcome back have been the same; 

Would the ring and shoes and all, 
With the robe, been given a daughter 

Had she been the one to fall? 



THE PROBLEM OF VICE I9I 

The Prodigal Son is not only a parable with a deep 
religious teaching, but it is a story true to life in every 
detail. Not even Jesus could have told such a story of 
a Prodigal Daughter, for there never was an age in 
which it would have been true to life. But this is 
not to say that Jesus would not have approved the 
same treatment for the daughter as for the son; and 
in giving different treatment to the sexes we set at 
naught the spirit, if not the letter, of all his ethical 
teaching. But it is not so much the abstract ethical 
character of our double standard with which we are 
just now concerned as with its social consequences. 
Our double standard, with its stern penalties for wom- 
en and its easy condoning of the sins of men, does 
little to restrain women, but much to encourage men to 
vice. A tremendous obstacle to any real progress in 
social purity is the eagerness of "good" mothers to 
secure as husbands for their daughters young men 
who are known to be vicious, and the willingness of 
fathers to stand by and see such sacrifice without pro- 
test. The social ostracism of the vicious of both sexes 
would be a deadly weapon against the powers of the 
underworld. We need a social ethic that will no more 
tolerate "sowing of wild oats" by a young man than 
by a young woman. It is not a double standard of 
morality that now proclaims the contrary, but a double 
standard of immorality. 

But, after recognizing all these contributory causes, 
we still come back to poverty as the prime cause of 
vice. "Poverty" is, to be sure, a term of indefinite 
connotations. If it is limited to actual suffering— to 



192 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

real, acute hunger and cold and nakedness — it could 
not be said to be the chief cause of anything. Com- 
paratively few are led or driven into a vicious or 
criminal life by the pressure of bitter want. "Poverty" 
may be defined in social terms as a return for one's 
utmost service as a worker that is insufficient for a 
decent and comfortable living. So long as those who 
organize the business of prostitution pay high wages, 
while those who organize ordinary "respectable" busi- 
ness pay low wages, there will exist a social condition 
making prostitution inevitable. What is true in the 
large is equally true of individual cases. The poor 
young girl, working hard for a pittance, longing for 
the leisure, the finery, the pleasure of her more fortu- 
nate sisters, and the rich young man ready to give her 
all these things in exchange for herself, are a combina- 
tion fatal to womanly virtue and social well-being. 
Every form of vice and most forms of crime depend 
on the presentation to a weak individual of a strong 
temptation, to him practically irresistible, by some one 
who profits personally or financially through the main- 
tenance of that temptation. Vice could not exist with- 
out constantly new recruits; the saloon could not be 
maintained but by the continual creation of new appe- 
tite for drink. We have been attempting to solve the 
problem by dealing with the weak individual who falls, 
by trying to reform magdalens and drunkards. We 
must resolutely attack the man or the organization that 
maintains the temptation if we expect any valuable 
social results. 

The relation of wages to living is therefore funda- 



THE PROBLEM OF VICE 1 93 

mental in this problem. Recent investigations have 
done much to establish the facts beyond reasonable 
question. According to the Consumers' League of 
New York, a girl who must support herself in that 
city cannot do so decently on a wage less than $9 a 
week. 1 The Philadelphia League names $8 as the 
standard for that city. The great majority of workers 
in factories and department stores in these two cities 
receive a maximum wage less than this minimum sum ; 
J J per cent, of workers in department stores receive 
less than $8 a week; and the average pay of women 
in factories is $4.62 for the first year and $5.34 the 
second, while 40 per cent, receive less than $6. It 
takes eight years for the average store employee to 
reach a living wage, and ten years for a factory em- 
ployee. These figures have been published far and 
wide and never challenged ; so their correctness may be 
taken as established. It follows, therefore, that, unless 
they live at home and only partly support themselves, 
the wages of women workers are below a decent living 
standard. The majority receive little more than half 
a living wage, and are consequently in a condition of 
constant poverty. 

Nothing has done more, probably, to open the eyes 
of the American people to the real condition of women 
workers than the investigation into the Chicago de- 
partment stores conducted by the committee of the 

1 Mrs. Frederick Nathan, of the New York Consumers' 
League, is authority for the statement that 60 per cent, of the 
saleswomen over sixteen years of age in New York stores re- 
ceive less than $6.50 a week. 



194 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

Illinois Senate in the spring in 191 3. These stores 
are among the largest and best managed in our coun- 
try. They are owned and conducted by men who have 
considerable repute as "philanthropists" — they are lib- 
eral contributors to local charities, to investigations of 
the "white slave" traffic, and the like. That they and 
their business methods had any relation to social prob- 
lems seems never to have occurred to them. The Com- 
mittee did not probe far without discovering that these 
department and mail order stores were making enor- 
mous profits, yet paid many of their girl employees 
less than a living wage. The head of one of the 
largest establishments admitted that the profits of his 
business amounted to $12,000,000 the preceding year, 
and also admitted that he employed 119 girls at $5 a 
week, but added that 1,465 received not less than $8 a 
week. Of course he could see no relation between low 
wages and prostitution. 

Another store owner, who refused to state his prof- 
its but virtually admitted that they ran into millions, 
scouted the suggestion that low wages could have any 
relation to vice. He maintained that $8 a week was 
ample to support a girl in comfort in Chicago, but on 
being given pencil and paper and asked to make out 
a budget this was the best that he could produce: 
Outer clothing, $1 ; shoes, hats, underwear, $1 ; laun- 
dry, 25 cents; room and board, $4; car fare, 60 cents; 
luncheon, 70 cents; physician and dentist, 60 cents; 
church, 10 cents — total $8.25. A little thought will 
show anybody how absurd is the idea that a girl who 
has this liberal wage could be tempted by the induce- 



THE PROBLEM OF VICE 1 95 

ments offered by a vicious life, its specious promise 
of ease and luxury. Think of the palatial apartment 
and sumptuous meals she can enjoy for $4 a week, 
and the luxurious luncheons she can have for 70 cents 
a week, not to mention the magnificent clothes and 
glittering jewels that she can buy for $1 ! How ridic- 
ulous that she should think of surrendering all this, 
together with the privilege of standing every day be- 
hind a counter, where she is scolded by impatient buy- 
ers and lordly floor-walkers, and ogled by silly dudes 
and fined by the head of her department for the slight- 
est offense, until her nominal pay of $8 becomes $6.42 
in her pay envelope. Why should she listen to the 
siren voice? Why, indeed! 



Ill 



That the causes of vice are mainly economic and 
therefore demand an economic remedy is sufficiently 
obvious. The one that has been suggested, the only 
one that may be said to be under immediate considera- 
tion, is the minimum wage, the probable effect of 
which measure on women's economic status has al- 
ready been discussed. We need only repeat that this 
is at best a slight palliative, a mere tinkering with sur- 
face facts. The Evening Post of New York said not 
long ago with regard to such experimentation with 
partial remedies : "If the fact of gross inequality of 
fortune, the fact that the rich might easily part with 
their superfluity and give it to the poor, were to be 



I96 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

accepted as a reason for compelling such redistribu- 
tion, the process could not stop with a little thing like 
a pitiful minimum wage for women. It would neces- 
sarily mean a complete reconstruction of the whole 
economic and social system." This is quite correct. 
Nothing less than such a reconstruction of our social 
and economic system as will secure the abolition of 
poverty can be reasonably expected to cure any of our 
social evils, and especially the evil of prostitution. 
Critics of socialism often pronounce it an immoral sys- 
tem, but it should be given the praise of seeking to 
stop the greatest immorality in existence, the sale of 
women's bodies, by making women economically in- 
dependent. It is capitalism that is immoral, in that 
it makes this cruel and wicked business inevitable. 

The fair-minded employer should welcome every 
step toward economic justice to women, such as the 
minimum wage law. In the present system, wages are 
adjusted, not to the earning power of women, but to 
the least wage upon which life can be supported. The 
wage-scale in any line of business is practically fixed 
by the meanest, least scrupulous competitor. What he 
pays others must pay or be undersold, though they 
might gladly pay more. The minimum wage makes 
this extreme exploitation unlawful, and compels the 
unscrupulous employer to act as if he had some de- 
cent scruples. This gives the better employers their 
chance to treat their workers with a greater measure 
of justice and yet not incur danger of bankruptcy. 

No one can study the conditions in which the girl 
workers of our cities live and labor without an increas- 



THE PROBLEM OF VICE 1 97 

ing sense of the fact that the cure of poverty must 
precede the cure of vice. Here is where the problem 
of the slum impinges on the problem of vice. Many 
forms of industry are carried on in tenement houses, 
besides those that the law has undertaken to prevent. 
The manufacture of artificial flowers is one of these, 
and young girls often work far into the night at this 
occupation. In the crowded tenements it is difficult to 
observe the decencies of life; and their bare, cheerless 
life of incessant labor becomes abhorrent to such girls. 
Their amusements are few, the dance hall and the 
moving picture show have few rivals. These are the 
recruiting places of vice, the haunts of cadets and pro- 
curesses, and the result can be easily foreseen. Pov- 
erty and the life that it compels have weakened the 
moral fiber of many young girls, and the allurements 
of a life that is speciously presented to them as one of 
ease and pleasure prove too great for their powers of 
resistance. Even so, many of them do resist, and have 
to be drugged or otherwise forced into a life that they 
would never voluntarily enter. 

The cure of poverty will depend to a great extent 
on the raising of the standard of efficiency among girl 
workers. At present 49 per cent, of girls who are com- 
pelled to work go into factories, and only one per cent, 
into skilled trades. Employers who can see beyond 
the weekly pay roll are now aware that the low wages 
paid to inexperienced and unskilled are the highest 
wages of all, measured by the sales cost, which is the 
only scientific measurement. The cheapest wages are 
the highest. Employers are looking for a way to elimi- 



I98 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

nate inefficient workers ; the surest, as well as the most 
profitable, way to eliminate the inefficient is to make 
all workers efficient. We are now revolving in a vi- 
cious circle, from which the capitalistic system offers 
no way of escape : inefficiency produces poverty and 
poverty in turn produces greater inefficiency. 

But would the abolition of poverty be really effective 
as a remedy for social vice? Does it not, after all, 
depend for its existence on a human passion and a 
human weakness quite unconnected with poverty ? No 
doubt poverty is not the sole cause of sexual immo- 
rality, for that has existed in all forms of society for 
ages, and will probably continue in some form for ages 
to come. The abolition of poverty would not abolish 
sexual immorality. It would reduce sexual immorality 
to sporadic cases, individual moral aberrations — such 
as are found, for example, in a rural community where 
all the people are substantially on the same economic 
level ; such as are found among the rich, who are like- 
wise economic equals. The difference would be this : 
women would continue sometimes to give themselves 
to those whom they loved, without the sanction of 
legal marriage, but they would not sell themselves 
promiscuously. Sexual immorality would continue, 
but prostitution would disappear, especially the com- 
mercial forms of prostitution. Vice would be a per- 
sonal error, it would no longer be a great commercial 
enterprise. 

The sexual impulse is undoubtedly one of the 
strongest factors of human nature, and any scheme 
of social reform that ignores it is doomed to failure. 



THE PROBLEM OF VICE 199 

But marriage, whether we regard it as a divine insti- 
tution or as merely human and social, is the normal 
provision and the sufficient provision for satisfaction 
of the sexual impulse, in its highest forms equally 
with the lowest. Vice is the perverted satisfaction of 
the lowest. This perversion is powerfully stimulated 
by anything that prevents normal satisfaction. Pov- 
erty, which forbids many thousands of adult men and 
women to marry, and compels other thousands to post- 
pone marriage until middle age, is a direct stimulus 
to vice the force of which can hardly be exaggerated. 
A standing army and navy is a standing invitation to 
vice. Enlisted men are practically all celibates, and 
the teaching of history is plain that celibacy on a large 
scale means sexual vice to an alarming degree. Part 
of the price we pay for our army and navy is the 
degradation of American womanhood. A monastery, 
or any organization that forbids marriage or makes 
it practically impossible, has always been a hot-bed of 
vice. A society in which there are many thousands of 
men and women debarred by poverty from marriage 
as inevitably produces prostitution as a match pro- 
duces a blaze. The demand creates a supply, and the 
supply stimulates the demand, and so the evil grows, 
even without any commercialization. An economic 
state that would make early marriage possible is the 
first condition of eradicating vice; the effort is hope- 
less otherwise. 

But even before the abolition of poverty and the 
relative abolition of vice we can do a great deal toward 
reducing this social evil to much smaller dimensions. 



200 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

It is the system, the commercialization of vice, the 
Trust, that greatly aggravates the evil. An ethical 
evil must be opposed by ethical means; an economic 
condition demands an economic remedy; but a busi- 
ness organization may be destroyed by law. We must 
adapt our remedies to the things to be reformed or 
abolished. We cannot break up a vice trust by ethical 
measures, and economic remedies are too slow-acting. 
We need, and we have a right to expect, some immedi- 
ate results. 

This is why the remedy hitherto attempted by the 
"good" element of the community has been so ineffec- 
tive. Christians have applied the old individual idea 
of the Gospel to this problem, and, in rescue work, 
Magdalens' Homes, and missions in the slums have 
sought to reclaim these fallen women. The work has 
been successful in this sense, that thousands have been 
reclaimed; and, if there is joy in heaven among the 
angels over one sinner that repents, this work must 
have caused great joy in heaven. But it has produced 
little result on earth. For every soul rescued, a dozen, 
a hundred, fresh recruits have been added to the ranks 
of the fallen. If firemen were playing on a fire with 
one stream of water while a dozen streams of oil 
were turned on by others, how long would it take to 
put out the fire ? Does it not become plainer every day 
that this work of rescuing individuals is to approach 
the problem of vice from the wrong side and to waste 
effort in a labor beside which that of Sisyphus was 
pleasant exercise? The only hope of solution lies, not 



THE PROBLEM OF VICE 201 

in rescuing women after they have fallen, but in pre- 
venting their fall. 

Not all of the vice that poverty causes goes by that 
name; much of it is dignified by the title of Christian 
marriage. When a woman sells herself, not to many 
men, but to one man, for the sake of a home, of sup- 
port, of ease and luxury, not the grace of holy altar 
and the blessing of priest and book can make the trans- 
action anything else than unethical and vicious. Yet 
this kind of sale, this form of vice, society pronounces 
perfectly "respectable." Our social arrangements vir- 
tually compel the majority of women to trade on their 
sex, and to make the best bargain for themselves pos- 
sible. A woman is said to have married well when 
she gets a good price for herself, in money and what 
money will bring. But where this is the sole motive, 
as it so often is, a woman does not become a man's 
wife — she becomes his mistress, in a way that law and 
social custom approve. 

All our terminology of marriage reflects this vicious 
and degrading fact. The law says that a man must 
"support" his wife, and when a woman marries she 
expects to be "supported." No idea of an equal part- 
nership, to which the woman contributes as much as 
the man, is recognized either in law or in our verbal 
usage. The woman is an economic dependent on the 
man she marries, as she has been on her father before 
marriage; and in the vast majority of cases the law 
and the language correspond to the fact. Because of 
this economic dependence, women have for generations 
been compelled to develop to the utmost and to make 



202 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

most skilful use of their sexual attractions, to induce 
some man to desire some woman enough to under- 
take her support. That explains the provocativeness 
of dress and manner found so widely among women 
of all classes ; this is their trade, the only one to which 
most of them have ever been bred : to catch a husband. 
It is horrible and vicious and depraved and "virtuous." 
I am writing almost coarsely about this thing ; I ad- 
mit it; I deplore it; for I am choosing as decorous 
words as I can find to describe a thing so essentially 
coarse that it is a wonder the very ink does not blush. 
And yet who will venture to deny that the thing de- 
scribed is of daily occurrence, and who will accuse me 
of incorrectly describing it? So long as her sex con- 
tinues to be her one commercial asset a woman cannot 
fairly be blamed for making the most of it. It is so- 
ciety that must shoulder the blame of keeping her in 
this state of economic dependence. It is society that 
must undertake to make impossible such unions as 
are now so common, by assuring women such eco- 
nomic independence as will make it possible for every 
woman to give herself to the man whom she loves, 
and unnecessary to sell herself to a man whom she 
does not love. At present the so-called "good" woman 
is driven by the same economic necessity as her 
"fallen" sister to trade on her sex. 



Ill 

There are three practical ways of dealing with so- 
cial vice. The first is indifference, the method of the 



THE PROBLEM OF VICE 203 

Greco-Roman world and of the heathen world to-day. 
This is practically our method also, since for the most 
part we simply let things drift, shut our eyes to fact, 
occasionally making some spasmodic attempt at re- 
pression, but refusing to make thorough study of con- 
ditions and find a cure. Raids and arrests, and long 
intervals of doing nothing, will never rid us of vice; 
it has been tried for three thousand years without the 
slightest result. This method will not even destroy 
the commercial system; it only makes it a little more 
difficult and expensive to do business. We can never 
cleanse the river at the mouth while allowing sewage 
to be discharged into it along its hundreds of miles of 
length. To cure bad results we must get at sources. 

A second method is that which has been advocated 
in this discussion : an intelligent attempt to seek the 
cause and to apply the cure there, in the only place 
where it can be effective. When every girl receives 
a wage sufficient for her comfortable support, when 
every young man receives a wage sufficient to enable 
him to marry, we shall see an end to social vice. 
When women no longer need to sell themselves no 
man can buy them. 

But we must in fairness consider a third method in 
which many profess confidence, namely, segregation. 
Sexual vice is illegal, but it is proposed practically to 
legalize it by setting apart a district in each city in 
which the law may be violated. We must recognize 
facts, say those who propose this method; and it is 
a fact that the evil exists and we are not able to eradi- 
cate it; let us therefore restrain it within limits, as the 



204 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

best that we can do, instead of permitting it to pol- 
lute the whole city. 

Let us recognize facts by all means, but there are 
two ways of doing it: to recognize and accept, or to 
recognize and war against the facts. Segregation pro- 
poses to recognize and accept the facts of social vice 
as inevitable, incurable, inescapable. That is pre- 
cisely what the moral sentiment of America has thus 
far sturdily refused to do, and so far it is a healthy 
moral sentiment. It has thus far lacked sufficient vigor 
of health to war against the facts intelligently and 
persistently. That the facts are here we all see; that 
they are inevitable, in the sense that they are the neces- 
sary result of our present economic system, is becom- 
ing clearer every day ; that they are incurable, that we 
have not the intelligence and the power to solve this 
problem, provided we have the will, is precisely what 
most of us refuse to believe. 

Because segregation is a plan, not to cure social evil 
but to make it permanent, it fails to command ethical 
support. Outside of the vice system and its patrons 
and secret friends it has few advocates. Where it has 
been tried in our communities, as in Chicago, its ef- 
fect has been to increase the worst evils of the system. 
It has stimulated the "white slave" traffic, the entrap- 
ping and forcible detention of young girls, which is 
perhaps the most cruel and shameful feature of the 
whole shameful and cruel business, but necessary for 
its profitable continuance, since not even poverty will 
force girls in sufficient numbers to choose the vicious 
life, and so fraud and force must be employed. 



THE PROBLEM OF VICE 205 

Two years' study of the whole subject in Europe 
convinced one competent investigator, Dr. Abraham 
Flexner, that there segregation fails to segregate, 
regulation does not regulate or control, and medical 
examination of a fraction of prostitutes is no protec- 
tion to society against disease. His negative results 
are valuable; more courage would have made Dr. 
Flexner's constructive work of equal value. He dis- 
covers the economic significance of European prosti- 
tution; there is practically but one source of supply 
for the vice, "the lower working classes and mainly 
the unmarried women of these classes," The daugh- 
ters of the poor are, in Europe as here, the victims 
of the system, with only here and there one from 
the educated and well-to-do. Surely, the conclusion is 
so obvious that no man with rudimentary reasoning 
powers could fail to draw it: the way to fight prosti- 
tution and end it, the only way, is to increase the intel- 
ligence and economic well-being of the lower classes. 
Instead, however, of drawing this obvious conclusion, 
Dr. Flexner slips adroitly aside and indulges in 
meaningless fine writing: "Civilization has stripped 
for a life and death wrestle with tuberculosis, alcohol 
and other plagues. It is on the verge of a similar 
struggle with the crasser forms of commercialized 
vice. Sooner or later, it must fling down the gauntlet 
to the whole horrible thing. That will be a real con- 
test — a contest that will tax the courage, the self-de- 
nial, the faith, the resources of humanity to their ut- 
most." This again emphasizes the lesson that one 
great obstacle to social progress to-day is the cow- 



206 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

ardice of those men who should be leaders, but are 
afraid to speak the whole truth. 

One argument often heard in favor of segregation 
is that any attempt to repress vice without segregation 
will result in scattering the vicious throughout the 
community; they will invade the good residential dis- 
tricts and annoy the rich and well-to-do. Let them 
scatter; let them invade. The poor have had to tol- 
erate them long enough. It is the rich whose profits 
cause the system; it is the rich whose money main- 
tains it; let the rich then reap the full fruits of what 
they have done and are doing. It might and probably 
would, rouse them to do something effective for the 
lessening of the evil, if not for its cure. 

But the chief objection to segregation is that tol- 
erated vice becomes by imperceptible degrees approved 
vice. Toleration destroys the sense of right and 
wrong in a community to an astonishing degree. The 
houses that are rented for this vile business bring the 
highest rents; and, tempted by this opportunity for 
gain, people of the highest respectability and social 
standing rent their property to the members of the 
"system." It may be that in some cases they are 
ignorant of the fact, that agents acting for them are 
responsible; but it may well be suspected that so long 
as income is large they take good care to keep them- 
selves ignorant of such details. A faithful preaching 
of the Gospel of Jesus ought to produce an ethical 
condition in Christian churches incompatible with such 
things. At present this left-handed partnership with 
vice is no bar to church membership. It was at one 



THE PROBLEM OF VICE 20J 

time proposed in Chicago to put a placard on each 
house let for immoral purposes with the name and ad- 
dress of the owner. The very proposal led to a sud- 
den cleaning up of one of the worst districts of the 
city. The example is to be commended to other cities ; 
there can be no doubt of its effectiveness in stimu- 
lating dormant consciences into active life. 

In December, 19 13, the president of a Realty Com- 
pany and manager of an apartment house in New 
York was convicted of renting a flat to be kept as a 
disorderly house. Justice Collins inflicted the maxi- 
mum fine of $500, but remarked that this was inade- 
quate as a penalty and therefore also imposed a sen- 
tence of twenty-five days' imprisonment. The Court 
added that this conviction of a person of prominence 
and wealth for this offense was the first in a long 
number of years. But the offense is without doubt 
frequently committed, and if such convictions were 
more frequent people of wealth and respectability 
would derive less income from this filthy source. 

It should be recognized that something can be done 
to reduce the extent of vice and suppress some of its 
crying abuses, by the general reform and cleaning 
up of our political system in which we Americans 
are now engaged. All those changes of method that 
give the people more direct control of government, in- 
cluding the initiative, referendum and recall, are helps 
toward solution of this problem. Those experiments 
in better municipal government, originating in the 
West and rapidly making their way eastward, will 
work in the same direction. Whatever changes in our 



208 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

system make for more real democracy will be effective 
in dealing with the second great factor in the system 
of commercialized vice, the greed that actuates it, tlie 
profit that makes it possible and keeps it going. 
Democracy will make a quick end of the alliance with 
the underworld that the police of our cities have so 
long maintained. No sober man will deny that the 
problem is a tremendous and many-sided one, nor will 
he maintain that striking improvement is to be hoped 
for in a day. But now that we are getting a better 
idea of the terms of the problem, what we have to do 
and how to do it, steady progress may be reasonably 
hoped for. 

It has been a great surprise to Americans of the 
better class to discover how intimate is the connection 
between vice and politics, and even yet they are hardly 
able to believe the facts thrust upon them from all 
sides. Yet the facts are too well attested to be dis- 
believed. Men have only begun to suspect the tie 
that exists between vice and capitalism. As we have 
seen, one great obstacle to the suppression of vice is 
found in the fact that the property interests of our 
"best citizens" lead them to give the system effective 
if secret support. But this is not the only, or even 
the chief, connection between men of wealth and vice. 
The existence of a large class of the vicious and 
criminal, the pimps and thugs of the underworld, is 
useful to capitalists — in fact, is indispensable. It fur- 
nishes the gangs of "guards" and "strike-breakers" 
employed against the workers in every great strike. 
It is the reserve militia of the employing class, and is 



THE PROBLEM OF VICE 209 

promptly called out whenever there are labor troubles, 
when it does effectively what it is hired to do. 

This sort of thing is work very congenial to the 
people of the underworld. It permits them to go 
armed and to indulge their liking for violence, while 
it supplies them with money for the indulgence of 
their appetites. It offers them facility for commit- 
ting all sorts of minor crimes with impunity, for the 
testimony of their victims will not be received against 
theirs in any court. If the strikers are women, it 
offers a golden opportunity to do their favorite work 
as panders ; for when working women are out of work, 
hungry and desperate, is the very time when they can 
best be persuaded to exchange the factory for the 
brothel. The police know these things, but it is their 
interest also to side with the employing class. The 
capitalists know the facts, but so long as strikes are 
broken they care for nothing else. So our cities have 
a large class of gunmen and "crooks," and when 
there is no other outlet for their activities they occa- 
sionally kill a policeman. Then we have a great ex- 
citement for a few days, and matters go on as before. 

Even when the police are honest and try to break 
up the commercialized system of vice, they are greatly 
handicapped by the law and the courts. It is exceed- 
ingly difficult to obtain evidence that will convict of- 
fenders. Officers in plain clothes are often forbidden 
to enter illegal resorts to get evidence against them, 
and to send an officer in uniform is "to hunt ducks 
with a brass band." The law, as interpreted by the 
courts, requires corroboration, in case a briber turns 



2IO THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

state's evidence, and the transaction being conducted 
in private there is never any third party available to 
furnish the corroboration. It actually seems as if the 
law and its administration were carefully contrived 
for the protection of the law-breaker, not of society. 
And so there is little improvement in a state of things 
that places heavy stress of temptation upon those who 
are little able to bear it, at the same time furnishing 
very inadequate protection for the weak. The only 
ray of hope is a growing sense of social and per- 
sonal responsibility for such conditions, since this 
promises for the future a closer brotherhood and a 
higher morality. 

Something may be done by better legislation to 
lessen vice, even though the value of this remedy is 
greatly overestimated by hosts of good people. The 
Mann Act is an excellent specimen of what may at 
present be accomplished by this method. It is directed 
specifically against the "white slave" traffic, and pro- 
vides imprisonment up to five years and a fine up to 
$1,000 for inveigling a woman into a house of prosti- 
tution or detaining her there against her will. Des- 
perate efforts were made by the interests involved to 
break this statute, by inducing the Supreme Court of 
the United States to declare it unconstitutional. The 
Attorney General did society good service, upholding 
the statute vigorously, and as it turned out success- 
fully. He argued that since the Supreme Court had 
upheld the constitutionality of the law against the 
transportation in interstate commerce of diseased cat- 
tle, it ought to be humane enough and wise enough to 



THE PROBLEM OF VICE 211 

regard women as at least of equal importance with 
cattle. "Will it be said," he argued, "that Congress, 
if it chooses to act, cannot protect the people of the 
several States against the wrongful transportation of 
women and girls — that the law affords greater secur- 
ity to cattle than it does to persons?" The decision 
handed down in February, 19 13, sustained the statute. 
The law went into effect in July, 19 10; and in two 
years following the Federal courts secured 337 con- 
victions, with sentences totaling 607 years and fines 
aggregating $66,605. There were only 35 acquittals 
of those indicted and tried. 



V 



What has been said applies in most particulars also 
to that other great vice and social evil, the drink 
habit. Men have used alcoholic beverages from prehis- 
toric times, and drunkenness has always been a social 
evil of most races. But only within the last century 
has the evil been so commercialized and extended as to 
become a world menace. The saloon is merely the 
local manifestation of a great capitalistic enterprise. 
As with all forms of Big Business, no restraint of 
law, morality or religion is permitted to stand in the 
way of Profit. Not only is every effort to limit the 
sale of liquor fought to the last ditch, but there is a 
constant and successful effort to stimulate the demand 
for liquor and so to increase its sale. "Successful," 
one says, because, notwithstanding the remarkable 



212 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

growth of "dry" territory in recent years, there has 
been a large increase in the per capita consumption 
of alcoholics. 

These facts are not so well known as they should 
be, so it is perhaps pardonable to dwell upon them a 
little. In the fiscal year of 191 3 the people of this 
country consumed 143,300,000 gallons of distilled 
liquors, an increase of 7,500,000 gallons over the pre- 
vious year, and breaking all former records. They 
poured down their throats during the same year 64,- 
500,000 barrels of beer, exceeding any previous year 
by more than a million barrels. Incidentally it may 
be mentioned that they smoked during the same time 
7,707,000,000 cigars and over 14,012,000,000 cigar- 
ettes. These, as a Kentucky "colonel" might say, are 
the necessaries of life. What was left out of their 
incomes the people spent for food, clothing, rent, and 
other luxuries. 

So completely is the business commercialized that 
the independent saloon hardly exists. There is a 
Brewers' Trust and a Distillers' Trust, and between 
them they not only manufacture the great bulk of 
liquor made, but control the retail trade. Most saloons 
have an ostensible owner, but the Trust has a chattel 
mortgage that fully covers the value of furniture and 
stock, and the "owner" is in reality only the hireling 
of the Trust. And when legal means of sale fail 
them, when lawful weapons of resistance to society 
prove ineffective, the Trusts never hesitate to resort 
to illegal — assassination and arson have marked the 
progress of temperance in every State where it has 



THE PROBLEM OF VICE 213 

progressed. The "blind tiger" and the "bootlegger" 
would, of course, be impossible institutions if dis- 
tillers and brewers would sell only to reputable per- 
sons and through legal agencies. Licit or illicit is all 
one to them, so the stuff is sold and the great god 
Profit remains on his throne. In my haste I have done 
them injustice, and I hasten to admit it : they would 
prefer, no doubt, to sell under the law, but when they 
cannot they are determined to sell against the law. 

So long as this great business of making a profit 
from the sale of alcohol in its various forms con- 
tinues, attempting the reform of individual victims is 
an absolutely futile method of dealing with it. Not 
only will the present volume of the traffic continue, 
but the ingenuity of men and the power of money 
will be exhausted in attempts to create more appetite 
and extend the business. And experience shows that 
the attempts will not be in vain. Prohibition does 
not prohibit, in any real or effective way. The Church 
and the various anti-saloon agitations, in spite of their 
local victories, are making no impression on the traffic 
as a whole. In spite of all yet accomplished by the 
forces hitherto arrayed against the saloon, a greater 
volume of liquor pours forth every year. We must 
learn to strike at the root of the evil, and not at a 
small branch here and there. And the roots of the 
liquor traffic are Profit and Poverty. Anything that 
improves the economic condition of the whole people 
will tend powerfully to reduce the consumption of 
liquor. But the quickest and surest results may be at- 



214 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

tained by eliminating the element of profit. There is 
one certain means of doing this, and that is to socialize 
the business, take it out of the hands of individuals 
and subject it to State control. 

It will be urged that nation-wide prohibition would 
be equally effective and ethically better. Let us not 
dispute over a name. What I am calling State con- 
trol is exactly what is usually called prohibition, which 
is not prohibition at all. The name is not honest, 
and that is why I prefer not to use it. In those 
States where a so-called prohibition law prevails, 
Maine for example, there is a State dispensary in every 
town where liquor may be bought, the buyer signing 
his name in a register and stating the purpose for 
which it is bought. Manufacture and sale of liquor 
are prohibited to individuals, but the State sells liquor 
in the so-called prohibition States. The Maine kind 
of "prohibition" is what I advocate for all our States, 
under the more honest term of State control. 

This would effectively dispose of one root of the 
evil, Profit. The business would not be conducted 
for a profit ; it would be minimized as far as possible ; 
and whatever profit there was would be for the benefit 
of us all, not for the enrichment of a few. In a very 
short time the sale would be reduced to small propor- 
tions, and in a generation might be expected virtually 
to cease. Especially would this be the case if the 
progress of society should eliminate the other root, 
Poverty. Sociologists are more and more coming to 
the conclusion that the drink habit is less a cause of 



THE PROBLEM OF VICE 215 

poverty than an effect. If we accept their opinion, we 
come by another way to the conviction that we have 
here a social evil for which an effective cure can be 
found only by the abolition of poverty. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE PROBLEM OF CRIME 



Crime is one of the costliest luxuries that society 
permits itself to enjoy. We worship efficiency, forget- 
ting that the efficiency of the social order is meas- 
ured by its degree of success in eliminating crime and 
other unnecessary costs. The more perfectly organized 
the society, the fewer the criminals. A high ratio of 
crime is an indictment of a people's civilization. The 
United States has a high ratio of crime. We have, 
it is true, elaborate and costly machinery for the de- 
tection and punishment of criminals, and thousands 
are detected and punished every year. There is no 
reason to question the excellence of the machinery; 
it is good of its kind. Yet that it is ineffective hardly 
demands argument or proof. We know perfectly well 
that we are engaged in the foolishly wasteful process 
of making criminals by thousands and reforming them 
by hundreds. Why not try to stop the making? 

If there are some who will demand proof of the 
ineffectiveness of our present system, let us take the 
prevalence of homicide throughout the United States, 
and especially in our cities. The average ratio of 
homicides in England is .9 per 100,000, while in thirty 

216 



THE PROBLEM OF CRIME 217 

of our large cities the average ratio in the years 1901- 
1910 was 6.9 and in 191 1 it rose to 8.3. We should 
probably select Russia as the least civilized of Euro- 
pean States, the country of "pogroms" and Nihilists, 
yet in our large cities as many people are murdered 
each year as in the whole of Russia. 1 On the other 
hand, the number of legal executions from 1909 to 19 12 
was 400. With an average number of 2,439 yearly 
homicides during the last ten years, there was an 
average number of yearly executions of about 100. 
No wonder the Hon. Andrew D. White declares that 
"we lead the civilized world, with the exception, per- 
haps, of lower Italy and Sicily, in murders, and espe- 
cially in unpunished murders." What is the necessity 
of agitating for abolition of capital punishment? a 
sarcastic critic of our institutions might ask. It is 
already virtually abolished. And its substitute, im- 
prisonment for life, is also practically abolished. The 
average "life" sentence is proved by our prison records 
to be about six years; and the worst cases are fre- 
quently pardoned after a year or two of confinement. 
Society has at present no protection worth mentioning 
against the crime of murder. 

Our system is as costly as it is ineffective. A 
rough estimate is that crime costs us as much as edu- 
cation, but the fact is that we have no statistics of 
crime worthy of being called scientific, and so any con- 
clusions must be tentative. But enough is known to 

J The exact figures are: homicides in Russia, 1907-1911, 7,716; 
in American cities, 1905-1909, 12,198. The correspondence of 
years is not exact, but this is immaterial. 



2l8 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

warrant the statement that to protect itself against 
crime and punish criminals costs society the equiva- 
lent of every bale of cotton and every bushel of wheat 
raised in the United States. Governor Foss told the 
American Prison Association that Massachusetts in 
19 1 2 spent $7,000,000 for police, courts and prisons, 
and less than $25,000 for the restoration of criminals 
to good citizenship. Massachusetts has always been 
considered one of our most intelligent and progressive 
commonwealths, yet it spends $280 for the punish- 
ment of crime for every dollar that is spent for the 
cure of crime. Naturally, we get for such expendi- 
ture more criminals and more crime. Four million 
dollars a day are worse than wasted because society 
is not willing to adopt curative measures, but prefers 
palliatives, and the least effective of palliatives at that. 
Not only are we constantly manufacturing fresh crim- 
inals, but the older stock are degenerated rather than 
regenerated by our system. 

One reason doubtless why our machinery fails to 
accomplish the desired result is that it violates men's 
ethical sense at every turn. To begin with, it is so 
bunglingly devised and so blindly and partially admin- 
istered. A man steals a railroad, a factory or some 
other valuable property, in Wall street, by means that 
we all understand. What do we, what does society, 
to him? Most of us admire and envy him; the rest 
condone his fault, especially if he is a good fellow or 
benevolent. Another man breaks into the first man's 
house and steals some property, silverware or jew- 
elry. What does society to him? If he can be 



THE PROBLEM OF CRIME 2 1 9 

caught, he is sent to prison for a term of years, usu- 
ally a long one. In such case, the man robbed has no 
better ethical title to his property than the man who 
robs — it is a case of one thief taking from another 
thief. But there is a vast social difference between 
the two offenses, identical as they are in ethical qual- 
ity: the law permits and custom makes respectable 
one sort of thieving, while both condemn the other. 
But "Thou shalt not steal," if it has any validity, 
applies to both men and to both offenses. 

The differences between the crimes of the upper 
classes and those of the lower correspond very closely 
in the main to their economic differences — that is to 
say, their crimes differ more in degree than in kind. 
The poor man is a little criminal, the rich man a big. 
One sins at retail, so to speak, the other at wholesale. 
There is something impressive about the rich man's 
crime; often its very audacity takes the breath away 
and makes one almost admire; while the poor man's 
offense often seems less wrong than mean and sordid. 
Among the upper classes the devil has learned to en- 
case his cloven hoofs in spats and patent leathers; 
he hides his tail under a dress suit, and a silk hat of 
the latest shape covers his horns. Among the poor he 
stalks in the old form, finding no disguise necessary. 1 

In both higher and lower classes crime has an eco- 
nomic cause, the same economic cause in truth. Crime 
is inseparable from the capitalistic system of industry. 
Poverty incites the worker, greed impels the employer, 

1 Ross, "Sin and Society," especially the chapter on New Va- 
rieties of Sin. 



220 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

to those acts that we call criminal. Take a single 
class of such acts as an example : Fire Commissioner 
Johnson, of New York, is responsible for the asser- 
tion that one fire of every four is of incendiary origin. 
Men deliberately start fires, and other men even more 
deliberately hire fires to be started, in order to collect 
insurance. There was a regular system in New York 
a few years ago, and may be still, and the like doubt- 
less exists in other cities, whereby a dishonest busi- 
ness man could hire professional "firebugs" to set 
fire to his premises. The insurance companies, in 
their greed for premiums, permitted such reckless over- 
insurance of property as in itself constituted a bribe 
to every dishonest man to commit this form of crime. 
If there were no fire insurance, fires would be dimin- 
ished fully 25 per cent. Thus it comes about that a 
business designed to protect the community against 
fire results is increasing the danger of the community 
from fire. This costly form of crime is one of the 
elements of the high cost of living; for, of course, the 
cost of premiums and all loss by fire is ultimately 
assessed on society, in the form of enhanced prices. 
Another consequence is that the class ordinarily de- 
scribed as law-abiding and conservative, the "business 
men" of the community, destroy more property than 
the class ordinarily described as criminal. This ex- 
traordinary state of affairs never before existed in 
any nation or society; it is the product of our modern 
industrial system and of unlimited competition in the 
insurance business. 



THE PROBLEM OF CRIME 221 



II 



One great difficulty in our dealing with the problem 
of crime is that we have no consistent system of 
penology. Our laws are founded on several different, 
if not contradictory, principles, some of which are no 
longer tenable. Punishments have been imposed by 
statute on the principle that certain offenses must be 
expiated by a certain penalty. But the idea of expia- 
tion is philosophically absurd and socially impossible. 
To "make the punishment fit the crime" seems easy 
until it is tried. Nobody can tell just what degree 
of moral turpitude is involved in a wrong act, and 
nobody can know the degree of suffering involved in 
a given penalty. Any algebraist will assure us that 
an equation containing two unknown quantities is in- 
soluble. Expiation could not be accomplished even 
with the values of both unknown quantities given, for 
evil cannot be expiated with evil. If, for example, a 
man has taken life, for society to take his life does 
not constitute expiation of the crime — it is merely an- 
other crime, murder added to murder. 

The new idea of God that Jesus has given us as- 
sures us that He does nothing to man save in love. 
We can no longer believe in a hell to which a venge- 
ful Deity condemns men to suffer endlessly, as the fit 
reward of the evil they have done here. If we believe 
now in future retribution, it is suffering that men 
bring on themselves by refusing a Father's forgive- 
ness and scorning a Father's love. That is the only 



222 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

idea of God and of retribution that Jesus permits a 
follower of his to entertain. If, as the theologians 
have for ages been asserting, human law at its best 
is but a transcript of the divine, then every act of 
society in dealing with crime, not prompted by the 
desire^ to protect itself by bettering the criminal, is 
itself criminal. 

If the principle of expiation cannot be admitted, as 
a foundation for criminal law, still less can revenge. 
Jesus forever ruled that out of the conduct of his 
disciples. He forbade to his followers the revenge ap- 
proved by Jewish law, and commanded in its stead 
the law of love, active good-will toward all: "But I 
say unto you, Love your enemies and pray for them 
that persecute you." But in spite of these words, the 
spirit of legislation has been for nineteen centuries, and 
still is : "Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, 
foot for foot, burning for burning, stripe for stripe" 
(Ex. 21:24). Still is, one says, for not long ago, 
in one of our American courts, a judge 1 addressed 
one whom he was sentencing to imprisonment for life 
in these words : 

"You are to receive a sterner punishment than death. 
You will die a hundred times. There will be for you 
only the hopeless painful years from day to day, from 
month to month, stretching out forever, and in agony. 
You will be wiped out from human knowledge. You will 
not be permitted to lift a hand or whisper a word. In 
four or five years the eternal solitude and silence will 

1 Judge Marcus Kavanagh, of the Superior Court of Cook 
County, Illinois, as reported in the Chicago papers. 



THE PROBLEM OF CRIME 223 

begin to crush in upon you like an iron weight. You hear 
that street-car bell ringing now ; you will remember it in 
after years as the most exquisite music. It will mean 
hurrying crowds that go where they like and do as they 
please; it will mean the greatest of all pleasures — free- 
dom. You can only dream of it by day and by night and 
your dream will be torture unspeakable. In the summer 
you will guess there are cool rivers running somewhere 
under green trees and you will long for the sight of even 
a green leaf with an aching you never thought you could 
experience. In a few weeks the holidays with their lights 
and festivities and happiness will be here, and many a 
Christmas will roll over you in your iron cage and high 
stone wall, but you will never hear a child laugh again. 
The law has taken its full and ample revenge upon you." 

If revenge could be admitted as a valid principle in 
law, then there are many who would say that a judge 
who could deliver such an inhuman and malignantly 
cruel tirade to a prisoner ought himself to be sent to 
prison for a long term of years. But even a judge 
capable of such deliberate and cold-blooded ferocity 
ought not to be punished in a spirit of revenge. He 
illustrates anew, what history testifies on every page, 
that bitter personal hate could not have devised more 
cruel and vindictive punishments than have been ad- 
ministered under sanction of law and in the name of 
justice. 

It is pleaded in behalf of laws framed on this prin- 
ciple that they satisfy a natural sentiment of man- 
kind, which demands retribution and will be content 
with nothing less. There is no question that the senti- 
ment of revenge is "natural," in the sense that it exists 



224 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

and is common ; but the question is, Is revenge ethical ? 
Is retribution justifiable? And the answer is that re- 
venge is both irreligious and anti-social. Irreligious 
we have already seen it to be, — flatly opposed to the 
teaching of Jesus. Is is as clearly anti-social, for all 
are agreed that only active good-will from all to all 
is compatible with social happiness and social progress. 
Revenge is the annihilation of good-will. The pres- 
ent degree of peace and order of society has been at- 
tained only by suppression of this "natural" desire 
for revenge. Individuals are no longer permitted 
to avenge their own wrongs; society has undertaken 
to see that each man is protected in his rights. So- 
ciety must not do what it has forbidden the individual 
to do. And, besides, a system of retributive punish- 
ment will break down of its own absurdities. Some 
offenses, as treason, cannot be returned in kind to the 
offender. Let us ponder a remark of Seneca's, 1 as 
wise as it is witty — "Would any one think himself to 
be in his perfect mind if he were to return kicks to a 
mule or bites to a dog?" 

The only ground on which society can make good 
its right to punish the criminal is the principle of self- 
protection. Society has the same right as the indi- 
vidual to repel attacks on itself and to use so much 
force as may be necessary. But society has no more 
right than the individual to use more force than is 
necessary for self-protection. This must be regarded 
as the ethical foundation of penology. Several things 
follow from this principle. If crime has a social cause 

1 Seneca, De Ira, iii, 26. 



THE PROBLEM OF CRIME 225 

or social causes, punishment of the individual is an 
ineffective means of self -protection, because it leaves 
the cause untouched, to go on producing crime. Real 
self-protection consists in removal of the social con- 
ditions that impel men to crime. It also follows that 
the real guilt of what we call crime is its anti-social 
character. The criminal is a man who refuses to 
accept the ethical standards of society, especially those 
that relate to property. Some of these standards are 
artificial and indefensible, but society insists that even 
these must be respected while they exist and must be 
modified in an orderly social way. Any other con- 
duct, even if it has behind it a true ethical principle, is 
selfish and anti-social. 

Crimes may be traced to the preponderance in many 
individuals of the selfish instinct over the social. The 
great majority of men have been brought by ages of 
discipline to the point where their social instinct is 
strong, and they hesitate to perform any act that 
promises to be injurious to the community of which 
they are members. No treatment of crime can make 
any claim to be considered scientific unless its aim 
is to develop the social instinct in the criminal and 
so eradicate crime by extinguishing the criminal mo- 
tive. In other words, the sole adequate protection 
of society from crime is the reformation of the 
criminal. 

If self -protect ion is the ethical ground of society's 
right to restrain the criminal, it follows that what- 
ever is prescribed for him must not be penalty for 
what he has done, but discipline to influence what he 



226 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

will henceforth do. This is fatal to the whole idea of 
"punishment" for crime, even as a deterrent. The 
saying ascribed to an English judge is often quoted 
with approval. In the good old days when men were 
hanged for stealing anything above a shilling's worth, 
a man was convicted of stealing a sheep, and in sen- 
tencing him the judge said: "You are hanged, not 
because you have stolen a sheep, but in order that 
sheep may not be stolen." But even conservative Eng- 
land finally became convinced that hanging was no 
real deterrent of theft, and did not secure its pro- 
fessed end, the protection of society in the enjoyment 
of property. Sheep-stealing went merrily on in spite 
of frequent hangings, and it was found better to let 
the thief live and do what was possible to transform 
him into an honest man. Now we are finding the 
principle of equality of sentences to be erroneous. 
They are indefensible on the theory of expiatory or 
retributive or deterrent punishment, because they can- 
not be adjusted to individual guilt. And if penalty 
is to be corrective, equal sentences are utterly absurd, 
for the nature and duration of corrective treatment 
must be adjusted to the character of the criminal and 
not to the supposed heinousness of his crime. 

There has been a great change in the general hu- 
maneness of civilized nations in the treatment of 
crime, but no great advance in principle. In 1837 the 
death penalty was repealed in England in the case of 
about two hundred crimes, without any appreciable in- 
crease in criminality. Public whippings, brandings, 
mutilations, once common, are now practically un- 



THE PROBLEM OF CRIME 227 

known. Cruel executions, such as breaking on the 
wheel, drawing asunder with horses, and the penalty 
for treason, familiar to every reader of English his- 
tory, of being "hanged, drawn and quartered," are 
now totally disused. The punishments that were se- 
vere to brutality were proved by experience to be no 
more deterrent than the milder. Indeed, it seems to 
be fairly well established that petty crimes were pro- 
portionally commoner when they were punished by 
hanging than now when the penalty is brief imprison- 
ment. Men reasoned a priori that heavy penalties 
would deter; but the fact proved to be that the more 
rigorous the penalty the less the restraint. The way 
of effectual protection of society from crime is to 
eliminate the criminal. Since we have decided not to 
eliminate him by death, the only method left to us is 
to eliminate him by reform. He must be changed 
into an honest man. 

In other words, everything that we have learned 
about criminals and crime points to the conclusion 
that direct attempts to suppress and punish crime are 
doomed to failure, and that progress is to be made in 
an altogether different direction from that in which 
we have been proceeding. We can do much to pro- 
tect society from crime by a rational treatment of the 
criminal, concerning which more will presently be said. 
But effective protection of society must begin back of 
the crime, in an endeavor to remove its causes. If it 
is true that crime has a social cause, punishing or re- 
forming the individual is no real remedy. If we per- 
mit large numbers of men to be assailed by what are 



228 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

to them irresistible temptations to commit crimes, and 
do nothing toward removal of such temptations, we 
ourselves are the real criminals. When we analyze 
any collection of statistics of crime, we come imme- 
diately to this fact : offenses against property are three 
times as numerous as offenses against the person. Of 
course there must be a reason for this, and it is not 
hard to find. The present distribution of wealth offers 
a constant inducement to large numbers of men and 
women to acquire from others with little exertion 
property that could normally be acquired only by great 
exertion. Hence those among us whose selfish in- 
stincts are stronger than the social — in other words, 
those who are not restrained by usual ethical principles 
and social habits — choose this short and easy way. 
Crime was the original get-rich-quick scheme, and is 
still the most popular. But crime of that sort is pos- 
sible only in a society where property is very un- 
equally distributed, so unequally that the moral sense 
of the propertyless is outraged by the conditions, and 
respect for property rights correspondingly weakened. 
If every man had or might have enough for his needs, 
what inducement would there be to take from his 
neighbor? The normal man would have little or no 
motive to steal or defraud, if he were not in need or 
did not expect to be in need. As all roads lead to 
Rome, so all investigation of our social problems leads 
us, by one path or another, to poverty as the under- 
lying cause or aggravation of them all. We may 
safely conclude that, with poverty, most crimes against 
property would disappear; and there would remain 



THE PROBLEM OF CRIME 229 

only those committed by the abnormal, and crimes of 
violence and passion, which are relatively few in 
number. 



Ill 



It must of course be recognized that for a long 
time to come we shall have to face the practical neces- 
sity of dealing with crime and criminals. This will 
be true no matter how rapid progress we make 
toward social justice and economic equality. What 
has the Gospel of Jesus to say about our attitude 
toward the criminal? The whole Christian idea of 
penology, as we have seen, is summed up in the pre- 
cept, "Love your enemies." The criminal is the enemy 
of society; very well, love hirn, show him active good 
will, do to him whatsoever things we would have done 
to us, were the case reversed. We should recognize 
that the criminal is either born a criminal or made a 
criminal. He is entitled to our pity as a man diseased 
or a man deformed : in either case a man needing to 
be cured, not deserving to be punished. Crime is 
pathological, and its effective treatment must be a 
system of ethical therapeutics. We may still call our 
civil tribunals "courts of justice" if we can persuade 
ourselves that they deserve the name; but, for our 
courts that deal with crime, we should invent another 
title better descriptive of their intent. Possibly 
"courts of correction" would answer our purpose. 
Let us, as Mr. Howells has well said, "be very careful 
how we try to do justice in this world, and mostly 



23O THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

leave retribution of all kinds to God, who really knows 
about things; and content ourselves as much as pos- 
sible with mercy, whose mistakes are not so irrepa- 
rable." 

Merely to send a criminal to prison is a pitiful ex- 
pedient for the protection of society; he should be 
kept there until there is reason to believe that, if re- 
leased, he will no longer commit crime. Our present 
practice operates merely as an interruption of his 
criminal career, not to mention that his imprisonment 
has only fixed his character and quite possibly per- 
fected his education as a criminal. To release a crim- 
inal unre formed is as irrational as it would be to turn 
loose a beast of prey after a brief confinement. It is 
even more irrational, for while the leopard cannot 
change his spots the mind of a criminal can be 
changed. In the small percentage of cases in which 
reform is found to be impossible, after due trial, the 
only adequate protection of society will be the life- 
long detention of such. And, since life imprisonment 
in such cases is socially necessary, it is justifiable. 

The indeterminate sentence is therefore the first 
step in a rational and Christian penology. If the ob- 
ject of society were to punish, on any of the theories 
of the value of punishment, there might be some jus- 
tification of fixed sentences. To suit so much punish- 
ment to such a grade of crime would in any case be 
crude justice, but it would not be unjust in principle. 
If, on the contrary, society has in view the good of 
the criminal, and believes that the surest protection for 
itself is lifting him to a better manhood, then there 



THE PROBLEM OF CRIME 23 1 

is no sense whatever in the definite sentence. Men 
so differ in present character, and in response to re- 
formative influences, that a term of detention and dis- 
cipline quite sufficient for one would be altogether in- 
adequate for another. Detention should cease when 
the object has been attained — namely, hopeful recla- 
mation of the offender — and not before. In leaving 
discretion to the judge to impose a longer or shorter 
sentence, the laws of most of our States have virtu- 
ally adopted the principle of the indeterminate sen- 
tence ; but the judge is not the person to be invested by 
law with this discretion, because he can only estimate 
the gravity of the offense, not the effect of discipline 
on the offender ; and so, with the best intentions in the 
world, he is more likely than not to make a blunder. 
The officer to whom the prisoner is given in charge 
for detention and discipline can best judge the effect 
and decide when the prisoner is fit to be released. Or, 
if this is thought too great and too easily abused power 
to be intrusted to a single officer, his recommendations 
may be made to a Board which shall have power of 
final action. 

Joined to the indeterminate sentence, of which it 
should be regarded as a sort of Siamese twin, should 
be a generous parole system. When a prisoner has 
given satisfactory evidence under detention and dis- 
cipline that he is fit to be set at liberty, he should be 
released on parole. The objection usually made to a 
reformatory penology is that it promotes hypocrisy 
rather than reform; that any prisoner will profess 
penitence, and will behave well for a time, if this 



232 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

promises to secure his release. The objection is theo- 
retically grave, and no doubt does constitute a prac- 
tical difficulty, but it is a priori reasoning and must be 
tested by experience. The parole system is already 
in use in several States, has been tried long enough 
to give it a fair testing, and has had the happiest 
results. The released prisoner is of course required 
for a certain period, varying with offenses and per- 
sons, to report himself and his doings to the proper 
officer at fixed intervals. An unsatisfactory report, or 
failure to report, is cause for rearrest and recom- 
mittal to prison. There are few failures. It is more 
difficult to follow the cases after final release from 
surveillance, but those who have had experience with 
the system believe that fully sixty per cent, do not 
again commit crime. In time we may hope for much 
better results than this, but surely even this is mak- 
ing great progress. 

Another important change in the treatment of crime 
is such modification in our penal laws as would per- 
mit more lenity to first offenders, especially when the 
offense is comparatively slight and the accused has 
previously borne a good character. The shame of 
arrest, trial and conviction is enough penalty in most 
cases of this kind to deter from a second offense. It 
would therefore be socially safe to give the court 
power to suspend sentence during good behavior for 
all first offenses, save those of the gravest character. 
This would result, in a multitude of cases, in the per- 
manent establishment in good character of those who, 
if sent to prison, may be turned into habitual crim- 



THE PROBLEM OF CRIME 233 

inals. The greatest blunder of our criminal laws, 
and that is saying much, is the sending of first offend- 
ers to the common compost-heap of our prisons. 
France is wiser than we. Its criminal code provides 
that for first offenses the judge may suspend sentence 
on parole for three years; if a second offense is com- 
mitted within that time the penalty is doubled. 
Our newspapers are full of cases that illustrate the 
comparative defect of the laws of most of our States, 
especially in dealing with young offenders. A ten- 
year-old boy in Georgia stole a bottle of pop, valued 
at five cents, and for this heinous crime was sentenced 
to confinement in the reformatory until his majority, 
or eleven years. A six-year-old criminal in Wisconsin 
was committed to the State industrial school, also to 
remain to the age of twenty-one. On the other hand, 
a boy in Cleveland stole from his employer $1,400 to 
go to Oxford and get an education. For several years 
he had spent all his evenings in study and devoted 
every cent he could save to the purchase of books. Be- 
ing sent to deposit this large sum of money in the bank 
the temptation was overwhelming, and he took the 
first train for New York and engaged passage on the 
Manretania. The vice-president of the corporation by 
which he was employed, when he learned of the cir- 
cumstances, made the public announcement: "If he 
wants higher education and has the mental qualifica- 
tions, I'll see that he gets it." In former times this 
would have been called encouraging crime, and some 
may still take that view of the case, but to a fast- 



234 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

growing number it will seem rather to be encourag- 
ing honesty. 

Of course, if reform of the criminal is the object 
of society, capital punishment must go. No one was 
ever reformed by hanging, or even by electrocution. 
The death penalty, at least as at present administered, 
has little deterrent power. Facts already cited — the 
large percentages of homicides and the low ratio of 
executions to killings — testify to that unmistakably. 
We shall soon have to choose between the two horns 
of a logical dilemma : If capital punishment is to be 
regarded as just and so to be retained, it involves re- 
jection of the theory of reformation as the sole end 
of penalty; if reformation is made the sole end of 
penalty, capital punishment must be abandoned as not 
only ineffective but indefensible. Society must of 
course protect itself against homicide, and at present 
it has no protection worthy of the name. Most homi- 
cides are of a nature that warrants expectation of no 
repetition; society would be safe in releasing such 
offenders after a period of confinement and discipline 
— in short, the principle of the indeterminate sentence 
could safely be applied to the majority of cases of 
this crime. A small minority of cases would require 
detention for life, in order to secure adequate protec- 
tion to society ; and a second offense should always be 
treated in that manner. 

IV 

The thing that cries loudest for immediate reform 
in our penal system is the management of our prisons. 



THE PROBLEM OF CRIME 235 

With a few honorable exceptions, they are at present 
criminal universities, in which men are trained to go 
forth and prey on society. They are officered, in 
large part, by men who are themselves criminals in 
spirit, and too often in act, for they violate the law 
every day in the discharge of their duties. The only 
difference between them and the men over whom they 
misuse the authority of society is that they have man- 
aged thus far to escape conviction. Not only is the 
personnel of our prisons almost the worst possible, 
but the management of most of them is as corrupt 
and dishonest as it is stupid. It is not extravagant to 
say that two-thirds of the men in charge of crim- 
inals, if they received their deserts under existing laws, 
would themselves be wearing stripes. 

Society at large shares the shame of these facts, be- 
cause it looks on these abuses with apathy and does 
not care about them enough to seek a remedy. It is 
shared by the legislators who made the present system 
and those who fail to modify it. Bills for the better- 
ment of the system fail at session after session of Con- 
gress and our legislatures, because of the indifference 
of the great majority of lawmakers and the opposition 
of a few who are interested in maintaining present 
evil conditions. 

Criminals must be sent to prison, as a place of de- 
tention, but it ought to be a sanitary building; the 
health of prisoners should be a first consideration, and 
humane treatment should be strictly required. How 
few of our prisons to-day answer these elementary re- 
quirements probably few people suspect, but all experts 



236 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

know too well. Most of the jails, penitentiaries and 
prisons of America are a disgrace to a civilized peo- 
ple. Many of them are nurseries of tuberculosis and 
other contagious diseases. 

Even if these defects were removed, our penal sys- 
tem would still be fundamentally unjust. A man 
who commits crime must be detained under discipline 
for a time, for his own good and for protection of 
society. This is just and he has no cause of com- 
plaint so far. But his family have not been guilty, 
and why should they suffer for his fault? We treat 
both the criminal and his family with hideous injus- 
tice, and his resentment of our treatment embitters 
him and makes permanent the enmity that he already 
feels against society. Let us put the thief in prison, 
since this must be so, but let him be there employed in 
some useful and remunerative labor at regular wages, 
his earnings to be paid to his family. If he is a single 
man, let his wages accumulate, and at his release on 
parole he will have a sum that will effectually help him 
to begin his new life. 

This would be rational ; this would be humane. But, 
instead of this, what do we? We hire out our pris- 
oners to contractors (in most States, not in all), and 
their interest is to get from the workers as much 
profit as possible; and we employ all the resources of 
prison discipline to drive these men like cattle, that 
the contractor's gains may be as large as possible. 
And the contractor, paying much smaller wages than 
for free labor, can undersell manufacturers who must 
depend on free labor, and so floods the market with 



THE PROBLEM OF CRIME 237 

cheap goods. The tendency is, and often the result, to 
reduce the wages of the outside workers to the level 
of prison prices. Thus a double wrong is done by 
the system, which has not even the poor excuse of 
being profitable to the taxpayer, for it usually results 
in a heavy deficit in the prison accounts, which must 
be met by taxation. Oh, the offense of this is rank; 
it smells to heaven! Society is itself a greater crim- 
inal than the criminal whom it punishes so cruelly. 

There are signs that the public is becoming aroused. 
In March, 191 3, Arkansas abolished the lease system, 
after a spectacular campaign lasting several years, one 
incident of which was the pardoning of three hundred 
and sixty convicts at once by the governor, on the 
ground that "the penitentiary was not designed for a 
revengeful hell." Henceforth the convicts are to be 
worked on a State farm, which is believed to interfere 
less with free labor than other lines of production, 
and also prepares men when released to secure em- 
ployment more easily than in trades. 

The contract system was in force in 19 13 in the 
States of Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, 
Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, 
Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New 
Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, South Caro- 
lina, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, 
Wisconsin and South Dakota. It is in our older com- 
monwealths, the States of the Atlantic seaboard and 
the middle West, that the abuse still lingers; with a 
single exception, the newer States of the far West 
have never adopted the practice or have discarded it. 



238 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

Even in the States east of the Mississippi in which 
the State prisons are free from the contract system, 
it still is found in the county workhouses or peniten- 
tiaries and in so-called "reformatories." No interest 
is promoted by this system but the interest of the con- 
tractor. He indeed greatly profits by a system that 
permits him to treat prisoners as slaves, and to offer 
goods so manufactured at prices with which free labor 
cannot compete, save at the penalty of starvation, vice 
and crime — a system that sends prisoners out at the 
end of their terms weakened in body and perverted in 
mind, a permanent addition to the burden of disease 
and criminality that the community must carry. A 
fearful price, this, to pay for a system that accom- 
plishes nothing for society but the enrichment of a 
few men. 

The initial mistake in our thinking about a penal 
system has perhaps been the assumption that crim- 
inals must be confined within four high walls, and can 
be employed only in manufactures. The South taught 
us the fallacy of this assumption (had we been willing 
to learn) when it hired out its convicts to contractors 
to work in the fields and on the roads; but the chain- 
gang was in no other respect better than the prison 
shop ; the brutality was as great, possibly greater, and 
while the health of the convicts may have been bettered 
by an outdoor life, nothing was accomplished for their 
reformation. The South at length became conscious 
of this fact and took the next step forward : the estab- 
lishment of penal farms. The management of these, 
however, still leaves much to be desired; some of the 



THE PROBLEM OF CRIME 239 

worst brutalities in the history of American penology 
have been disclosed in these penal farms. Certain 
Northern States adopted the idea and made their 
farms not merely penal but reformatory. The guards 
with loaded rifles were dispensed with and the honor 
system was substituted : each convict admitted to the 
farm is required to sign a pledge of good conduct. 
Honor among convicts? Impossible, preposterous! 
will be the sneering comment of many readers. But 
at the Ohio penal farm, at Mansfield, during a trial of 
ten years, out of 2,600 prisoners only 18 ever at- 
tempted to escape. The superintendent has no means 
of tracing all the men after their release, but he be- 
lieves that fully 65 per cent, live thereafter honest 
lives. At Canon City, Colorado, and Great Meadow, 
New York, similar conditions prevail, with similar 
results. The prisoners are not required to work all the 
time; they are encouraged to play baseball and foot- 
ball, and live a normal life in clean surroundings. 
Treat convicts as beasts and they will become beasts, 
as the chain-gang and the prison-shop show; treat 
convicts like men and they will become men. Nearly 
every State in the Union possesses large tracts of 
waste land which through the labor of its convicts 
might be made to blossom as the rose, while the ma- 
jority of the workers would be reclaimed to lives of 
honesty and productiveness. 

Employment of convicts on road work is equally 
possible and perhaps even more desirable. It will 
naturally be argued by many that convicts employed 
in such labor, unrestrained by guards and loaded rifles, 



240 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

would promptly make their escape, and would con- 
stitute a serious menace to the surrounding commu- 
nity. Experience shows that a few will escape, but 
that the great majority will be faithful to their pledge 
of honor. Oregon had, a few years ago, one of the 
worst prison-contract systems in America. The sys- 
tem was abolished and the convicts were employed 
in road-building. The new system was efficient in its 
purpose, and has been equally efficient in men-build- 
ing. Moreover, it has been profitable : formerly the 
convicts required from the State treasury $40,000 a 
year for their support ; to-day they are self-supporting, 
the prisoners are earning wages for themselves and 
their families, miles of good roads contribute to the 
wealth of the State, and a large proportion of the con- 
victs on their release seek and obtain honest employ- 
ment. It is becoming recognized that one of the most 
urgent needs of the people of the United States is 
good roads. Here is a means of obtaining them, not 
only without expense, but with great incidental profit 
to the whole community. How long shall we permit 
the evils of our prison system to continue unabated, 
when the remedy has been put into our very hands? 
If men will not hear the call of humanity, will they 
forever be insensible to the promptings of greed? If 
they cannot see their fellow man in a convict, can 
they not see the dollar in his labor — the dollar that 
they might enjoy, instead of the contractor? 

The Washington State Reformatory is another il- 
lustration of the fact that the far West is taking 
the lead in penology. This institution is conducted 



THE PROBLEM OF CRIME 24I 

less like a prison than a school, and its success has 
won for it the title of the University of Another 
Chance. The indeterminate sentence, manual training, 
corrective discipline, and the parole are its chief fea- 
tures — nothing novel in theory or practice, but still 
unusual. Firms and corporations throughout the 
State are said to be willing to give employment to the 
"graduates" of this school, most of whom continue to 
give good account of themselves. The connection be- 
tween crime and ignorance is so close, and has so often 
been commented on, as itself to suggest that to in- 
crease the intelligence of criminals is the best way to 
weaken the criminal impulse. When the former crim- 
inal has been fitted by training of mind and hand to 
do some honest and productive work for society, more 
than half the inducement to crime has been taken 
from him forever. 

One is not ignorant of, nor does he ignore, the 
fact that a prison is not a Sunday school or a kinder- 
garten; that discipline must be maintained (but what 
sort of discipline?); that prisons should as far as 
possible be made to pay expenses and not be a burden 
on the taxpayer; that it is difficult to get men of high 
mental and moral tone to serve as wardens and officers 
of a prison; or any other piffling objections that may 
be made to prison reform. But surely Christian civili- 
zation is equal to the task of devising a better system 
than we now have, and of finding men to work it. 
One cannot argue with defenders of the present sys- 
tem; they are too ignorant of the Gospel of Jesus, or 



242 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

believe it too little, to find a common meeting-point 
with those who believe that Gospel. 

If men will endure our brutal and inhuman meth- 
ods, women will not; and we may confidently expect 
one of the earliest beneficent effects of woman suffrage 
to be the amelioration of our methods with criminals. 
When we think of our filthy jails in which uncon- 
demned and in many cases innocent persons are con- 
fined; of our prisons with their crowded unsanitary 
cells and their slave-pen workshops; of our courts 
which savagely send a man to prison for thirty years 
for the theft of a scarf-pin, or a boy for stealing a 
five-cent soft drink, or a labor leader for leading a 
street parade; we may well hope with fervency for 
the day when the American woman may be heard in 
our legislatures, and even in the holy Congress and 
possibly on the sacrosanct judicial bench. 



In the present state of civilization, the crime of 
crimes is war. There was not a war during the nine- 
teenth century that was not wholly unnecessary and 
indefensible. This is not equivalent to saying that 
none of the warring nations had a real grievance, or 
it may be an unselfish purpose. To say that war is 
unnecessary is not to say that it is wanton and cause- 
less; it is to say that peaceful solution of the diffi- 
culties was possible, and that failure to seek and find 
peaceful solution in these days is inexcusable. No 



THE PROBLEM OF CRIME 243 

difficulties can arise between civilized, not to say 
Christian, nations that cannot be solved peaceably, any 
more than difficulties can arise between two civilized 
men that cannot be peacefully settled. We insist, as a 
fundamental postulate of civilization, that all difficul- 
ties between individuals shall be submitted to the deci- 
sion of courts, not fought out as in former ages by 
personal combat. The duel is no more obsolete in 
civilization than war. War is merely a relic of bar- 
barism. 

The ideas commonly connoted by words and 
phrases like "patriotism," "national dignity," "national 
rights," are as obsolete, barbaric and criminal as war 
itself. Their prevalence among the people is one of 
the chief reasons why war is still possible. Our 
schools are doing great mischief in still propagating 
these ideas, under the wrong-headed conviction that 
this is the way to make good citizens. Much of the 
cheap sentiment of newspapers and political speeches 
about "Old Glory" belongs in the same category. 
There is a real patriotism, and there is a genuine 
honor for our country's symbol, differing widely from 
these shams ; and they inspire love of peace, hatred of 
war. Real patriotism wishes our country to be leader 
among the nations in promoting peace and justice 
throughout the world, so that the flag will stand for 
something more than power and will be honored 
wherever it flies. 

Armaments are unnecessary and inexcusable in our 
state of civilization — as inexcusable as the carrying of 
arms by private citizens. A man walking the streets 



244 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

of our cities has exactly the same justification for 
going armed to the teeth that any nation has for main- 
taining standing armies and navies. His excuse would 
be that some other men carry weapons, and that occa- 
sionally one of them shoots somebody, and he must 
therefore be prepared to defend himself. It is quite 
true that hardly a day passes in which somebody is 
not shot in New York, but few citizens regard that 
fact as sufficient reason for carrying a rifle and a brace 
of revolvers down Broadway. Yet in spite of the 
patent folly of the thing, the nations of Europe are 
engaged in a mad race to be first in the matter of 
preparedness for war, until their enormous armaments 
threaten them with universal bankruptcy. 

And we are urged to join this lunacy. Our maga- 
zines and newspapers abound in articles inciting our 
government to adopt a policy of this kind. Even 
as it is, our appropriations for war and its results 
form a larger proportion of our annual national ex- 
penditure than can be paralleled in the budget of any 
European nation, but this does not satisfy the Hob- 
sons. There is probably not a professional soldier or 
sailor who is not more or less obsessed by this notion 
of imminent danger to the United States from attack 
by some foreign power. Now it is Japan, now it is 
Germany, that is said to be our secret and deadly foe ; 
and horrible are the descriptions of the defeat and suf- 
fering that would certainly be ours should such an at- 
tack be made upon us in our present well-nigh de- 
fenseless state. On us civilians who have retained our 
sanity, and can estimate this rhodomontade as it de- 



THE PROBLEM OF CRIME 245 

serves, these professional advocates of war look with 
pity not quite unmixed with contempt. 

That there is method in this madness we have be- 
gun to suspect and even to know. We may acquit 
the professional soldier of anything worse than a bias 
resulting from his education and calling, but the 
civilian advocate of armaments is too often the agent 
of corruption. It has been made clear in many ways 
that the creation of a great navy is the inspiration of 
"graft." The Steel Trust and its allies are those 
who profit chiefly by the building of these enormously 
expensive ships of war; just as in Germany it has 
lately been proved that the great Krupp works have 
been engaged in the propaganda of warlike sentiment, 
to stimulate the demand for their immense and costly 
guns. Ambition and greed — the ambition of rulers 
and statesmen and generals, and the greed of capital- 
ists — are together responsible for wars and arma- 
ments. If these two forces could be eliminated or con- 
trolled, there would never be another war. 

The workers have lately awakened to these facts. 
They are expected to furnish food for the powder that 
the ruling class manufactures — to fight and shed their 
blood that ruler and statesman and general may be 
called great and capitalist may become richer. This 
is the real meaning of modern war, however deftly 
that meaning may be wrapped up in patriotic phrases. 
And the working man is very tired of playing "goat/' 
of being the silent and unresisting victim of this abom- 
inable system. The workers of Europe have begun to 
manifest a new spirit and to exercise a decisive influ- 



246 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

ence in the affairs of nations, by serving formal no- 
tice that they will endure this no longer. They have 
virtually declared a general strike against war. When 
the conflict broke out in the Balkans, in November, 
191 2, a general European war was feared. It had 
long been predicted that, in such an event, the jealousy 
of the chief European nations regarding the division 
of the "sick man's" estate would inevitably precipi- 
tate a conflict. And for a time it looked as if the 
prediction were certain of fulfilment. Austria and 
Germany and Russia began to arm themselves and to 
send ultimatums, and the clash of arms was expected 
to come to us on every breeze. Then something hap- 
pened. On November 17, vast numbers of workmen 
met in every capital of Europe, save St. Petersburg, 
and protested against war. Paris, Berlin and London 
each saw gatherings of nearly a hundred thousand 
men. A few weeks later came a meeting of the Inter- 
national Socialist Congress at Berne, where the great 
Cathedral was filled with a shouting multitude listen- 
ing to speeches and resolutions that proclaimed the 
gospel of peace and good will to all the world. 

There was sudden change in the atmosphere of 
Europe. The war-clouds dissolved and the sun of 
peace shone again in the heavens. Statesmen who had 
been threatening the strong and bullying the weak sud- 
denly began to roar as gently as a sucking dove. The 
real power of Europe had spoken — the power that 
usually works and suffers and is silent — the power 
that produces the world's wealth and is the pillar of 
kings' thrones and the maker of dukes' coronets, de- 



THE PROBLEM OF CRIME 247 

spised and spat upon by the great, but irresistible when 
it makes its will known. This is the effective war 
against war. How are battles to be fought and vic- 
tories to be gained, if the workers will not fight? For 
reasons that will be obvious to the dullest, the capi- 
talistic press made only the most perfunctory refer- 
ence to this event, the most significant of the twen- 
tieth century thus far, and not one of them had the 
insight and courage to point out its significance. It 
would be very bad policy to do anything to develop 
the consciousness of power among the masses. But 
what was then done has been thoroughly apprehended 
by the working classes; and in spite of the silence of 
the professed leaders and instructors of public opinion 
the workers are gaining some realization, albeit yet 
but dim, of their real power and how it may be ef- 
fectively used. 

The ruling ideas of any age or people are the ideas 
of its ruling class. The classes that have hitherto 
ruled the world, the aristocracy of birth and the aris- 
tocracy of wealth, are giving place to democracy. The 
world's workers, the producers of wealth, have no in-- 
terest in wars and armaments; on the contrary, all 
their interests are on the side of universal peace. The 
idea that wars are necessary, indeed inevitable, has 
been carefully fostered and is still industriously propa- 
gated by the capitalistic class and its literary hirelings, 
because in wars and armaments they find immense 
profits. A great financier over whom the nation lately 
shed abundant crocodile tears, is said to have got his 
first start on his career as philanthropist and art con- 



248 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

noisseur by himself remaining at home during the 
civil war and selling the government guns that would 
not shoot. On the whole, capitalists find greater 
profits in armaments than in wars, but occasional wars 
are necessary to justify the armaments, as well as use- 
ful in providing additional territory for exploitation. 
The story has been often told, and is generally be- 
lieved to be substantially true, that an American capi- 
talist, who is also a journalist- — or, more accurately, 
an owner of newspapers — was the real cause of the 
war with Spain. So confident was he of his ability to 
provoke a conflict, that, when an employee whom he 
had sent to Cuba to report the war, telegraphed to his 
chief, "I can't find any war here; I had better come 
home," he sent in reply the message, now classic in 
journalistic circles, "You furnish the news, and I will 
furnish the war." 

How capitalistic greed inspires wars, the recent his- 
tory of Mexico illustrates. President Diaz was kept 
in power for many years through the power of cap- 
ital, which found this course to its interest, as it 
meant great "concessions" and profits. At length, one 
dissatisfied clique of capitalists financed a "revolu- 
tion." Diaz was overthrown and Madero succeeded. 
Presently, another clique precipitated a second "revo- 
lution" and Huerta came into power. Incidentally, 
Madero lost his life, which was, from the capitalistic 
point of view, unfortunate, but he took a gambler's 
chance and lost. Ever since these capital- fomented 
troubles began in Mexico, the capitalistic cliques have 
been doing their utmost, through the usual channels 



THE PROBLEM OF CRIME 249 

of diplomacy and the press, to induce our government 
to interfere. After maintaining a policy of "watchful 
waiting" for months, President Wilson sent a naval 
and military force to occupy Vera Cruz. The media- 
tion of the South American republics was then of- 
fered and accepted, and seems likely to be successful 
in restoring peace to Mexico, at least for a time. But, 
as this volume goes to press, the American people are 
still uncertain whether they are to be forced into a 
bloody and costly war, merely to serve the purposes 
of a band of greedy plunderers. 

War was once a necessity; it was the only means 
nations had of settling their differences and righting 
their wrongs. Generations ago war became a crime. 
War is now an insanity. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE PROBLEM OF DISEASE 



"Be ye perfect," said Jesus to his disciples. If it 
be conceded that ethical perfection only was in his 
thought (of which none can be certain), it still fol- 
lows that ethical perfection is for most men impos- 
sible without a certain measure of physical well-be- 
ing. According to the story of Eden, God made man 
in full bodily vigor and supplied all his wants before 
he laid upon him any commandment. The Gospel 
demands of every man that he live a full, rich, noble 
life, that he become the man God planned him to be. 
Redemption of the body and the spirit is the goal 
of a Christian Christianity. 

But this implies of necessity the opportunity for 
every man to live such a life, and our social order 
denies such opportunity to the great majority. The 
disciples of Jesus cannot propose to themselves any- 
thing less than a perfect human society. That society 
should be ethically perfect will perhaps be granted 
without argument to be a fitting ideal, even by those 
who have no faith that such a society may be attained, 
or even approximated. We must recognize the teach- 

250 



THE PROBLEM OF DISEASE 25 1 

ing of experience, that ethical perfection implies also 
physical conditions approaching the perfect. To ex- 
pect high ethical life amid low economic conditions is 
to expect flowers to bloom on a bare rock. 

"Since the second century," says Ritschl, "nothing 
has guided the Church less in its efforts for social 
amelioration than the ideal of the kingdom of God 
on earth, in the sense in which Christ and his apostles 
used the term." A glance the most cursory at our 
social conditions finds ample justification for this state- 
ment as applied to our own age, and a quick flitting 
through the pages of history brings forth a like re- 
sult regarding the past. Disease, misery, poverty have 
always bound men as with chains and fetters, and 
men will be helpless to rise until these bonds have 
been stricken from them. These things are here in 
the world, not by will of God, but by act of man. 
It is for man to rid himself of them, and to cease 
praying to God for deliverance from what man brings 
on himself. The farmer might as wisely sit on the 
fence and pray for a crop, as for us to beseech God 
to rid us of pestilence. Yet most Christian people 
would laugh or pity if they saw such a farmer, while 
they will regard as irreligious the suggestion that 
prayer is no remedy for disease. And yet they would 
probably assent to the abstract proposition that God 
will not do for us what we are quite capable of doing 
for ourselves. 

The new idea of the Gospel is not hostile to prayer 
and does not belittle divine help; but it does lay in- 
creasing emphasis on self-help, and it does try to put 



252 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

prayer in its proper place, as a supplement to human 
effort, not a substitute for it. Above all, it recog- 
nizes that to form is better than to reform, that pre- 
vention is better than cure; or, to use medical terms, 
prophylaxis is more important, because more effica- 
cious, than therapeutics. Much disease may easily be 
prevented ; cure is always uncertain. The time is com- 
ing when the test of a people's civilization will be 
freedom from disease. For we have now reached a 
point where smallpox, malaria, yellow fever and ty- 
phoid are no longer diseases — they are crimes. Tuber- 
culosis and syphilis are not diseases — they are penal- 
ties. Accordingly, we have now a new ideal of philan- 
thropy : the old nursed the victims of fever and plague ; 
the new exterminates mosquitoes and rats. Father 
Damien was the typical saint of the old ideal; Captain 
Lazear is the typical saint of the new. 

Economic reasons urge us to attempt the conquest 
of disease, quite as strongly as philanthropic. Disease 
is one of the heaviest taxes on production. The esti- 
mated economic cost of sickness each year in the 
United States is $792,892,000. * This is almost cer- 
tainly an underestimate. Even so, it exceeds the en- 
tire cotton crop of 191 1, which was valued at $732,- 
420,000 — the largest crop ever grown. The imagina- 

1 The experience of Germany is that 40 per cent, of employees 
will be sick an average of 8.5 days per annum. Estimating the 
loss of wages at an average of $1.50 a day, the cost of medical 
attendance at $1.00 a day, and the economic loss at 50 cents 
a day, the total cost of sickness among the 33,500,000 workers 
of the United States in 1910 was over $792,000,000. — Rubinow, 
"Social Insurance," p. 214. 



THE PROBLEM OF DISEASE 253 

tion is easily impressed by the proposition to destroy 
the whole of our greatest crop of cotton. We can 
figure to ourselves something of the widespread misery 
and ruin that would result, and also comprehend how 
every one of us would ultimately feel that loss, in the 
enhanced cost of cotton goods. We find it more diffi- 
cult to realize that each year an equivalent tax for 
sickness is assessed on us, and that we pay in that 
cost of living about which we grumble. Nothing can 
be more certain than that eventually it is we who pay 
for our neighbor's sickness. To play the priest and 
Levite, and pass by on the other side, is only a tem- 
porary evasion of our responsibility; the bill for the 
sick and wounded stranger will one day be presented 
to us in such wise that we cannot refuse to pay. It 
will be cheaper for us, as well as more humane and 
more Christian, to play the Good Samaritan and take 
out our two pence at once. 

The great scourges of the past are under control, 
some are disappearing and none are now a great men- 
ace to America, though they may for some time con- 
tinue to afBict other parts of the earth. The Great 
White Plague, the Great Black Plague, anaemia and 
alcoholism are the chief scourges of the race to-day. 
Once we subdue these four great enemies, we may 
count the victory over disease virtually won. There 
will remain, not great campaigns to be fought, but a 
guerrilla warfare to be waged, until, band by band, 
all the foes will be subdued. That task will be annoy- 
ing, and perhaps long-drawn-out, but it will be noth- 



254 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

ing in comparison to our present difficulties and dan- 
gers. 

II 

As yet we are only feeling our way to better meth- 
ods ; old ideas and old methods still hold the great ma- 
jority in their grip. Our confused thinking, the natural 
result of this transition, makes us uncertain in both 
aim and procedure, so we fumble and fail. When we 
first became aroused to the ravages of tuberculosis 
and the possibility of curing the great majority of 
cases in the initial stage of the disease, we had a 
national spasm of zeal for the establishment of sana- 
toriums and camps for the open-air cure. Enormous 
sums, each year growing in actual and proportional 
amount, are expended in this hopeless and futile effort. 
In the year 19 12 nearly $19,000,000 (so it is esti- 
mated by the national society for the cure of tuber- 
culosis) was spent in the United States in this way. 
There are no figures available for the sum spent in 
prevention, but it was doubtless trifling in comparison. 
And probably nobody, certainly nobody of authority, 
would maintain that any impression worth mentioning 
was made on the Great White Plague by this immense 
expenditure. There were unquestionably more new 
cases than cures during the year. 

Even with our imperfect methods of registration, 
it is known that 180,000 persons died of this disease 
in 19 1 2, and the real number was probably in excess 
of 200,000. In some classes the mortality is excep- 



THE PROBLEM OF DISEASE 255 

tionally high : 90 per cent, of the deaths of employees 
in the textile industries are from tuberculosis, most 
of which are easily preventable. The shuttles used in 
many mills are known as "suction shuttles" : in thread- 
ing them the weaver sucks the thread or yarn through 
an opening, incidentally filling his throat and lungs 
with lint, promoting bronchial troubles and inhaling 
tuberculosis germs deposited by a diseased worker. 
Shuttles used thus by tubercular operatives and well 
alike, become direct causes of infection. Attempts to 
prohibit their use have been stoutly opposed by em- 
ployers. Capitalists would rather kill off a large per- 
centage of their workers every year than go to the 
expense of new equipment. Human life is cheaper 
than machinery. 

Tuberculosis is, for reasons not yet understood, a 
greater menace to some races than to others. Poles, 
Italians and members of the numerous Slav races are 
comparatively immune; while the Irish are peculiarly 
susceptible, especially in the second generation on 
American soil, and native-born Americans of all ori- 
gins contract this disease far more easily than immi- 
grants. We cannot dismiss this as a problem that only 
remotely concerns us — there is none more intimate or 
pressing. At the same time, it is not a problem of 
America alone ; 40 per cent, of the deaths from disease 
in Germany are from tuberculosis. And there, as 
here, money is spent too exclusively on cure of indi- 
viduals. It is said that $60,000,000 have been spent in 
recent years in building workingmen's homes and 



256 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

$20,000,000 for hospitals and sanatoriums, in the vain 
hope of coping with the scourge. 

Socially speaking, the only way to cure tuberculosis 
is to prevent it. And this is not difficult, because we 
now know that the real cause of this disease is mal- 
nutrition, underfeeding. The bacilli or "germs" of 
tuberculosis are practically omnipresent in the air, and 
every person takes them into his system. The only 
reason why we do not all of us fall victims to this 
disease, apart from constitutional immunity of some, 
is that most of us are able to maintain well-nourished 
and vigorous bodies. The bacilli cannot effect lodg- 
ment in a healthy body ; we breathe them in, and they 
attempt to make a home in our throats and lungs and 
our bodies rally their forces and kill them before 
they can do any damage. But when bacilli enter a 
body weakened by underfeeding, or lodge in throats 
and lungs inflamed by dust or poisonous gases, they 
find a fertile soil for growth. Tuberculosis is a disease 
of tenements and factories, in the main, and flourishes 
among the poor. Comparatively few of the well-to-do 
are attacked, and among them the disease is curable in 
the majority of cases, if taken in hand in time, by 
giving the body what it has lacked, plenty of nour- 
ishing food and fresh air. These expensive luxuries 
are quite beyond the reach of the poor, so they die. 

A large proportion of working people, using that 
term in its usual sense of manual workers, suffer from 
anaemia, or poverty of the blood, because they are con- 
tinually underfed. This does not mean that they do 
not have "enough to eat" in the ordinary usage of 



THE PROBLEM OF DISEASE 257 

those words; it means that they do not have enough 
nourishing food to keep their bodies up to a fair 
standard of efficiency. It is one thing to silence the 
cravings of hunger; it is quite a different thing to 
satisfy the needs of the body. To gratify the appe- 
tite is not necessarily to be fed. Malnutrition includes 
not merely underfeeding, in the sense of insufficient 
quantity of food, but improper feeding, the giving of 
unfit and contaminated food. Malnutrition in this 
sense is the cause of the frightful infant mortality that 
prevails throughout our country, especially in our 
cities. Three hundred thousand infants under a year 
old die every year in the United States. One calls this 
mortality frightful, because it is believed that, while 
malnutrition is responsible for the death of 50 per 
cent, of people of all ages, it causes 85 per cent, of 
infant mortality. That this high rate is due to easily 
preventable causes is necessary inference from the fact 
that in the poor quarters of our cities 373 infants of 
every thousand die before completing their first year, 
while in the better residence districts the mortality is 
156 in the thousand. And that even this is extrava- 
gantly high is proved by the fact that in New Zea- 
land infant mortality is sixty-eight to the thousand. 
We have only recently begun to think of New Zealand 
as a civilized country, but it has surpassed us greatly 
in one of the prime essentials of civilization, providing 
security for human life. 

Cure of malnutrition is therefore something more 
and other than insuring more food and cheaper food 
for all people : it also means good food. Much of that 



258 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

sold in the markets, even that bought at high prices 
by the rich, is not good food. The campaign for 
pure- food laws has brought to light many adultera- 
tions and substitutions that are hurtful, as well as 
some that are merely dishonest; and enforcement of 
such laws as we have has done something to improve 
the quality of our foods. But in many cases the law 
does not attempt to prevent some of the most serious 
impairments of our daily foods. This is especially 
true of the cereals that form so large a part of our 
diet. All cereals have an outer husk, composed mainly 
of mineral matter and of no food value. But imme- 
diately inside of this husk is a thin, dark-colored layer, 
which contains phosphates and organic substances that 
constitute an essential part of cereal food value. One 
of these constituents is a crystalline organic base, to 
which the name "vitamine" has been given. The vita- 
mines are found in all cereals and their presence in 
food is necessary to proper metabolism. Their ab- 
sence causes progressive degeneration of the nervous 
system, culminating in fatal disease. 

In the Orient, where rice is the staple cereal, and 
with many people the chief food, the preparation of 
this grain for market removes the whole of this brown 
outer envelope, leaving the polished, glistening white 
rice with which all are familiar. There is little nutri- 
ment in this but starch. The result of an exclusive 
diet of this rice is the disease known as beri-beri, a 
polyneuritis that finally manifests itself in disorders as 
apparently different as paralysis, hypertrophy of the 
heart and dropsy. Since rice is less used among us, 



THE PROBLEM OF DISEASE 259 

the danger of our contracting beri-beri is slight; but 
the same (or, at all events, a similar) disease is caused 
by an exclusive diet of bread made from the ordinary 
white wheat flour of commerce, which is the staple of 
diet in many families. Thousands of poor people 
make two meals every day of bread and tea exclu- 
sively, and their bread is made from white flour. The 
process of making our ordinary white flour inge- 
niously removes from it every trace of the vitamines 
whose presence is essential to health. When Sylves- 
ter Graham taught our grandmothers to make bread 
of flour composed of the whole wheat berry, he was 
on the right track, though he did not have the cor- 
rect scientific basis for his teaching. Still better than 
the "graham" flour of commerce is a "whole wheat" 
flour, that eliminates the silicate husk, while it retains 
the phosphates and vitamines so essential to nutrition. 
People who have a varied diet are not seriously 
harmed by the absence of vitamines in their bread; 
other articles of food supply the missing ingredient. 
But people who rely on bread as a chief food should 
by all means choose that made of whole wheat flour. 1 
Ignorance, as we see from this, may be the cause 
of malnutrition, no less than poverty. No doubt the 
infant mortality of the tenements is much increased 
by ignorance. When medical inspectors find mothers 
giving such viands as sausage and cabbage to infants 

*As this is not a treatise on dietetics, these sample Instances 
must suffice. For further particulars, readers are referred to 
"Starving America," an excellent popular discussion of dietetics, 
from the commercial as well as the hygienic point of view. 



260 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

of a few weeks, it is evident that more food and bet- 
ter food is not the only need of such people; they also 
need elementary instruction in the care of infants. It 
is the greater intelligence of the well-to-do, no less 
than their ability to provide better food, that decreases 
the death-rate among their children. And so any pro- 
gram for the prevention of disease must include, as 
one of its most prominent features, systematic pop- 
ular lectures, illustrated with the lantern and the mov- 
ing picture, that will teach the poor how to care for 
their children. Good housing and a living wage will 
come near completing the list of things to be done, so 
far as the homes of the poor enter into the problem. 

The establishment, with the opening of the year 
191 3, of a Children's Bureau in the Department of 
Commerce and Labor will accomplish much, by sys- 
tematic study of the facts and collection of them into 
trustworthy statistics, toward solution of our prob- 
lem. The first report, made in January, 1914, by the 
chief of this new Bureau, Julia C. Lathrop, is not only 
the first document of the kind printed by our Federal 
government, but one of unusual significance in itself. 
It takes as its starting point the figures of the Census 
Bureau, that 300,000 infants die annually in the 
United States, of whom at least half would live if 
known measures of hygiene and sanitation were ap- 
plied in our communities. Subjects for immediate in- 
quiry by the Bureau are said to be: infant mortality, 
birth rate, orphanage, juvenile courts, desertion, dan- 
gerous occupations, accidents and diseases of chil- 
dren, employment, and legislation affecting chil- 



THE PROBLEM OF DISEASE 26l 

dren. Not all of these are directly connected with the 
problem of disease, but all are connected with social 
problems that we are greatly interested to understand 
and solve. We have reason to congratulate ourselves 
that Uncle Sam, at our urgent bidding, has at last 
undertaken to do as much for our children as he long 
ago did for our cattle and hogs. 1 

It is not popular ignorance, perhaps, that is the 
greatest bar to progress in dealing with disease. Quite 
as general, and far more disgraceful, is the ignorance 
of our legislators, journalists, ministers, and the rest 
of our educated class who lead and express public 
opinion. Not only are they densely ignorant of the 
problem as a whole, but they are not in the least aware 
of what has been done to make its solution possible 
both in theory and in practice. They do not know, and 
they are reluctant to believe when told, what has actu- 
ally been done here and there to cope successfully with 
disease. It is almost a wilful ignorance on their part, 
for knowledge is so easily accessible. There is already 
a literature of public hygiene almost as large as the 
literature of bridge or golf. And yet, each time a 
remedial measure is suggested it is received and de- 
bated as if it were an absolutely new and untried idea, 
and our most intelligent citizens will gravely pro- 
nounce absurd and impracticable that which European 
countries have had in successful operation for more 

1 This is not quite exact. Last year (1913) Uncle Sam spent 
$7,699,191 on the Bureaus devoted to the welfare of animals 
and crops, and a beggarly $31,000 for children. Chief Lathrop 
asks for $165,000 for 1914. 



262 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

than a generation. This is one of the most discourag- 
ing features of the situation and is possibly the chief 
cause of our slow progress. 

In order to lessen ignorance, popular or otherwise, 
States and municipalities should provide suitable liter- 
ature for general circulation, and supplement this with 
illustrated lectures about personal health and home 
sanitation. The sooner this is done on a large scale, 
systematically, persistently, the better will become the 
prospect of overcoming disease. Much of this instruc- 
tion could be given in factories and stores. Instruc- 
tion in first aid should be given to all workers, and 
every workshop where machinery is used should be 
required by law to keep at hand all appliances neces- 
sary to treat accidents. Increased efficiency of work- 
ers would repay all costs. The trades unions might 
be encouraged also to have such instruction given at 
their meetings. Boards of health should be empow- 
ered to inspect all places where people are employed, 
not merely as now to see that the premises are kept in 
good sanitary condition, but to have general oversight 
of the health of the workers. This would imply that 
power should be intrusted to them to require those 
likely to become ill or incapacitated, and in conse- 
quence to become a burden to family or community, 
to undergo suitable medical or surgical treatment. In 
short, to keep men well is more economical than to cure 
them after they have become sick. 

Conditions of workers and buildings are often a 
disgrace to our present means of caring for the pub- 
lic health. It is not necessary to go at length into 



THE PROBLEM OF DISEASE 263 

loathsome and sickening particulars, that have been 
discovered by inspectors, official and volunteer, and 
published where all might read them who would. It 
is enough to say that in canneries and other factories 
for preparation of foods, workers have been found 
in large numbers who suffer from virulent eye, skin, 
and scalp diseases ; while buildings were overrun with 
fleas, rats, and other vermin. We may be certain 
that if people realized the conditions under which their 
foods are often prepared, they would not only refuse 
to buy and eat them, but would make such emphatic 
protest that something would be speedily done by negli- 
gent or corrupt officials who now wink at such a state 
of things. Our national carelessness in such things is 
really astounding. The objections that both employ- 
ers and employed almost always make to any improve- 
ment in such conditions invariably disappear as both 
become assured that this is part of that increase of 
efficiency that society is now seeking, and finds so 
profitable whenever it is attained. 

Next to underfeeding, overcrowding stands as the 
great cause of disease, and the bad ventilation, or no 
ventilation, that invariably accompanies overcrowding. 
This is especially manifest in most of the "occupa- 
tional diseases, ,, which might be reduced to negligible 
proportions by requiring decent sanitation of all work- 
shops and stores, admission of abundant light, free 
use of water, and scientific ventilation to remove dust 
and poisonous gases, as well as to admit fresh air. The 
gravity of occupational diseases is not rightly appre- 
hended, because the total number of victims to each 



264 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

disorder seems small ; yet, in proportion to the number 
of workers, deaths or total disabilities are often 
alarmingly large. Some of these diseases are as old 
as trades themselves. So long as there have been 
tailors and shoemakers, certain diseases have attacked 
workers of these trades, in consequence of their seden- 
tary and stooping labor. But rise of new industries 
and new conditions of work has been occasion for 
many new diseases and aggravation of many old. 

Authorities on occupational diseases have suggested 
their division into four classes : Those due to dust, 
to chemical poisons, to germ infections, and to the 
physical conditions of labor. 

Diseases of the respiratory organs are caused or 
aggravated by dust. An inflamed condition of the 
mucous membranes results from constant breathing of 
dust-laden air, which favorably disposes workers to 
contract tuberculosis, bronchitis, pneumonia. Dyspep- 
sia and diseases of the digestive tract come next. The 
metal polisher lives on the average only fifteen years 
after learning his trade. The stone-cutter's trade is 
most hazardous of all, his chance of death being much 
greater than that of the soldier in battle. An average 
mortality of about 25 in 1,000 in the dusty trades 
from tuberculosis alone, and of about 300 from all 
diseases, speaks eloquently of the dangers faced by 
those who practice them. Most of this mortality could 
be prevented by use of fans and scientific ventilation. 

Chemical poisoning is quite as dangerous and 
equally preventable. All workers in lead are subject 
to this danger, and the number of trades in which 



THE PROBLEM OF DISEASE 265 

lead is used in some form is legion. Lead poisoning 
is the more dangerous because it is so insidious and 
is cumulative, not immediate. For months or even 
years the worker notices nothing, when suddenly the 
cumulative force of the poison in the system asserts 
itself and he collapses. Indigestion, lack of appetite 
and other symptoms may give him warning ; or paraly- 
sis may suddenly disable him entirely. Transient or 
temporary blindness, deafness, loss of taste and smell, 
are some of the other results. Lead poisoning does 
not kill so many outright as some other forms of oc- 
cupational diseases, but the damage it does to gen- 
eral health and efficiency is often more serious eco- 
nomically than death would be. In this case air and 
water are the great preventives. If shops and fac- 
tories where lead is used were properly ventilated, and 
if workers were not only encouraged but compelled to 
practice frequent ablutions, absorption of lead would 
be greatly reduced and the health of workers much 
benefited. A certain amount of danger is inseparable 
from use of poisons in manufactures, but care will 
eliminate the greater part of the risk. 

Trades in which mercury and phosphorus are used 
are more dangerous than the lead trades, as these poi- 
sons act more quickly and are more rapidly absorbed. 
Mercury is absorbed through the skin, and also as 
dust and vapor through the lungs. Its effects are 
manifested in "salivation" and loss of teeth, and later 
by ulcerations on the body or in the internal organs. 
It is much more likely to be fatal than lead poisoning. 
The fumes of phosphorus are inhaled by match 



266 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

workers, and a frequent effect is what is known in the 
trade as "fossy" jaw, ulceration of the teeth and decay 
of the jaw bone, accompanied with great suffering and 
often terminating in death. It seems impossible to 
take sufficient precautions to make phosphorus safe 
to handle, and the only course is to use some other 
substance in the making of matches. 1 This has now 
been done by some manufacturers, and should be re- 
quired from all. People can help by refusing to buy 
the ordinary cheap "parlor" match. No matter how 
cheaply the phosphorus match of commerce can be 
made and sold, any article is too dear whose making 
requires the needless sacrifice of human life. 

Many occupations bring workers incidentally or ac- 
cidentally in contact with infected materials, from 
which they contract diseases. This is inseparable 
from certain occupations, and cannot be minimized by 
any known process. This is true of tanners and fur- 
riers; the skins that form the raw material of their 
trades come from animals in all parts of the world, 
and contain germs of various diseases. Any process 
of disinfection would injure the skin or fur or both, 
and the workers have to take their chance. Anthrax 
and tetanus are among the diseases thus contracted; 
fortunately the cases are infrequent, for they are gen- 
erally fatal. Those in the woolen, shoddy, and paper 
industries, in which the sorting over of old rags is 
part of the work, often acquire diseases from infected 
rags. These, however, are almost entirely preventable 

1 On phosphorus poisoning in industries, see a valuable paper 
in the Bulletins of the Bureau of Labor, Vol. XX, pp. 31 seq. 



THE PROBLEM OF DISEASE 267 

through disinfection by live steam, and diseases of this 
kind should be classified henceforth under the head of 
criminal negligence. 

There remain the diseases caused by physical condi- 
tions of labor, including the various forms of over- 
exertion. These are most numerous of all, and if it 
were necessary for our purpose they might be sub- 
divided into several sections. Some of these diseases 
are relatively new. There is caisson disease, which at- 
tacks those who labor in laying foundations to our 
modern skyscrapers, and building tunnels under rivers, 
requiring them to spend some hours each day in com- 
pressed air. The transition from normal air pressure 
to that of several atmospheres in the caisson, and vice 
versa, is each time a strain on the body, which after 
a while results in dizziness, neuralgic pains, and a form 
of paralysis known among workers as "the bends," 
which usually terminates in death. New York now 
limits work under air pressure of over twenty-eight 
pounds to three hours a period, with at least an hour's 
intermission. Great heat and rapid changes of tem- 
perature among glass workers, iron workers, and 
paper makers are fruitful causes of disease. Precau- 
tions easily taken would greatly reduce these dangers. 
Overwork is possible anywhere and occurs almost 
everywhere. It may be defined as incurring more 
fatigue in any one day than can be made good by the 
night's rest. Where this habitually takes place, there 
must be regular physical degeneration, until the point 
of breakdown is reached. The remedy for this is the 
introduction of all labor-saving methods and devices 



268 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

possible (not so-called labor-saving machinery, be it 
noted), and the shortening of the hours of labor as 
rapidly as possible. 

With regard to most of these occupational diseases, 
proper statutes regulating sanitation of stores and fac- 
tories, drawn by sanitary experts, and based on in- 
vestigations already made by government experts, pro- 
viding for effective inspection by boards of health, 
with power to close any building until it is made to 
comply with the law, must be our chief reliance. Such 
statutes in all our States would work wonders toward 
prevention of this form of disease, and advancement 
of public health. 

Ill 

Only the parsimony and indifference of the people, 
first of all, and the corruption and inefficiency of the 
men they have chosen as legislators in the second 
place, prevent the speedy eradication of several dis- 
eases that now scourge the American people. More of 
our people die every year of typhoid than were slain 
in the war between Japan and Russia ; more die every 
week than went down with the Titanic. Every one 
of these deaths is preventable with our present knowl- 
edge of the disease. In fact, they should not be called 
deaths, but murders. With a pure water supply most 
cases could never occur; reasonable precautions would 
prevent the carrying of contagion by other means. But 
inoculation with anti-typhoid serum is a practically 
complete preventive. This has been absolutely proved 



THE PROBLEM OF DISEASE 269 

by the experience of our Army and Navy in the past 
few years. In 191 1 there were 222 cases of typhoid 
in the Navy. In 19 12 the requirement of inoculation 
became operative and among the 26,000 persons in 
the service there was but one case of typhoid, and that 
was very mild and issued in speedy recovery. A cir- 
cular of the War Department, issued in February, 
1913, says that in the war of 1898, among 120,000 
soldiers, there were 20,730 cases of typhoid and 1,590 
deaths. In 19 12 among 61,405 officers and men in 
the United States proper there were 18 cases of ty- 
phoid. The ratio decreased from 6.74 in 1901 to .376 
in the first six months of 1912. The difference that 
has taken place in little more than a decade is strik- 
ingly shown in this comparison: in 1898, among 10,- 
759 men encamped at Jacksonville, Florida, there were 
1,729 cases; in 191 1, in a similar encampment at San 
Antonio, Texas, 62,801 were gathered with only a 
single case. Could there be a more effective demon- 
stration that typhoid is preventable, aud that the multi- 
tudes who die of it every year are a totally unneces- 
sary sacrifice? 

Yet there are among us, unfortunately, thousands 
of poor deluded fools who continue to protest against 
all forms of inoculation and vaccination, and anti- 
toxins and serums, and oppose with even more vehe- 
mence the vivisection by means of which these reme- 
dies have been discovered and made available. It is, 
indeed, well for the prospects of the race and social 
improvement in the coming years that these uncon- 
scious enemies of their kind are as uninfluential as they 



27O THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

are relatively few. And yet they are both sufficiently 
numerous and sufficiently successful in affecting the 
attitude of many toward medical progress to justify 
us in recalling what vivisection has done, and what 
we may therefore hope it will do in future. Vivisec- 
tion, in its technical meaning, includes any and every 
experiment made upon the living body. When Cap- 
tain Lazear offered himself as the subject of an experi- 
ment to determine whether the bite of a mosquito 
would convey yellow fever, he was engaged in the 
horrible practice of vivisection in its most horrible 
form — experimentation on a human being. But he 
offered himself for this purpose because determination 
of a scientific fact, on which the welfare and safety 
of mankind greatly depended, could be reached in no 
other way. He lost his life and we honor him as a 
hero, but if that point could as well have been deter- 
mined by having a mosquito bite a rabbit his fitting 
epitaph would be, "Died as the fool diem." 

That men have the right to use the lower animals in 
any way that will advance the interests of mankind is 
an ethical principle that the great majority will not 
question for ages to come, if ever. Denial of this 
principle is too sublimated ethics for a race that con- 
sumes animal food daily. We shall do well for a few 
centuries to come if we approximate more nearly the 
ethics of Jesus, who said to his disciples: "Ye are of 
more value than many sparrows," and "Of how much 
more value then is a man than a sheep?" Unnecessary 
cruelty is quite another matter, and no reasonable per- 
son would deny that experimentation with animals 



THE PROBLEM OF DISEASE 2JI 

should be restricted to experts conducting scientific re- 
search, and that everything should be done to make 
such experimentation as humane as possible. This 
comes far short indeed of a sweeping denial of the 
right of vivisection. 

That medicine is to-day in any sense a science and 
has progressed beyond the mediaeval empiricism is due 
almost wholly to vivisection. Every time that we call 
in a physician we experience the benefits of such in- 
vestigation and participate in the discoveries made. A 
list was prepared some years ago by Dr. W. W. Keen, 
of Philadelphia, one of the foremost surgeons of 
America, briefly setting forth the progress of medical 
science by this means. It deserves the most careful 
reading and even pondering: 

i. The discovery and development of the antiseptic 
method which has made possible all the wonderful results 
of modern surgery. 

2. The practical development of modern abdominal 
surgery, including operations on the stomach, intestines, 
appendix, liver, gall stones, pancreas, spleen, kidneys, etc. 

3. The development of the modern surgery of the 
brain. 

4. The new surgery of the chest, including the sur- 
gery of the heart, lungs, aorta, esophagus, etc. 

5. The almost complete preventing of lockjaw after 
operations and even after accidents. 

6. The reduction of the death rate after compound 
fractures from two out of three, i. e., sixty-six in a hun- 
dred, to less than one in a hundred. 

7. The reduction of the death rate of ovariotomy 



2>J2 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

from two out of three, or sixty-six in a hundred, to two 
or three out of a hundred. 

8. The reduction of the death rate after operations 
like hernia, amputation of the breast and of most tumors 
so that it is now almost a negligible factor. 

9. The abolition wherever the proper measures are 
taken, in this country and the canal zone, of yellow fever. 

10. An enormous diminution of the ravages of ma- 
laria, and, in some places, its total abolition. 

11. The reduction of the death rate of hydrophobia 
from 12 to 14 per cent, of persons bitten to 0.77 per cent. 

12. The development of a method of direct transfu- 
sion of blood which has already saved very many lives. 

13. The reduction through the use of antitoxin of 
the death rate of diphtheria all over the civilized world. 
This reduction shows a change from a mortality of 79.9 
deaths per 100,000 of population in 1894, to 19 deaths 
per 100,000 in 1905. 

14. The reduction of the mortality of epidemic cere- 
brospinal meningitis from 75 or even 90-odd per cent, 
in the absence of serum treatment, to 20 per cent, and 
less when the specific serum is used. 

15. The cutting down of the death rate of tubercu- 
losis by from 30 to 50 per cent. This is due not to treat- 
ment by serum or vaccines, but to methods of prevention 
based on the knowledge of the cause of tuberculosis. 

16. In the British army and navy Malta fever has 
been abolished. In 1905, before the successful researches 
on this disease, it attacked nearly 1,300 soldiers and sail- 
ors. In 1907 the army had only eleven cases; in 1908, 
five cases; in 1909, one case. 

17. The almost complete abolition of childbed fever, 
the chief former peril of maternity. Its mortality has 



THE PROBLEM OF DISEASE 273 

been reduced from five to ten up even to fifty-seven in 
every hundred mothers to one in 1,250 mothers. 

18. The discovery of a remedy (Salvarsan), which 
bids fair to protect innocent wives and unborn children, 
besides many others in the community at large, from the 
horrible curse of syphilis. 

19. The discovery of a vaccine against typhoid fever; 
which in the recent army maneuvers on the Mexican 
border prevented the development of typhoid among the 
soldiers, which in hospitals has greatly reduced its inci- 
dence among nurses, and which is now coming into 
general use in all places where infection is possible. 
The improved sanitation, which has helped to reduce 
the typhoid death rate in this country, is itself largely 
the result of bacteriologic experimentation. 

20. Many recent activities indicate that we are grad- 
ually nearing the discovery of the cause, and then we 
hope of the cure, of several of the dreadful scourges of 
humanity: as cancer, infantile paralysis, pellagra; and 
that diseases of the tropics, such as sleeping sickness, etc., 
are about to come under man's control. 

21. Finally, it may be pointed out that animals them- 
selves have been enormously benefited, for by discover- 
ing the causes, and in many cases the means of prevent- 
ing tuberculosis, rinderpest, anthrax, glanders, hog 
cholera, chicken cholera, lumpy jaw, distemper and other 
diseases of animals, animal suffering has been greatly 
diminished. 

Any one who can study this list of discoveries made 
through experimentation on animals, nearly every one 
of which would have been impossible by any other 
means, and is capable of weighing the vast good to 



274 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

mankind that will for all time to come result from 
these advances in knowledge, and can still oppose vivi- 
section, convicts himself of incapacity to comprehend 
scientific proof or of culpable indifference to the wel- 
fare of humanity. He must be treated like any other 
enemy of society: ignored so far as he is harmless, 
suppressed when he becomes dangerous. When his 
opposition to the good of his fellows becomes a men- 
ace to public health there is no way but to apply force. 
The right of the community to protect itself is supe- 
rior to the right of the individual to refuse or neglect 
necessary precautions against disease, and superior to 
the ethical crotchets of a small minority. 



IV 



In the meantime, though we are making steady 
progress toward the prevention of disease, we must 
do more and not less for the relief of the sick. No 
word that has been written is intended to discourage 
or condemn curative measures, only to direct atten- 
tion to the more important as well as more neglected 
work of prevention. We may well be proud of the 
work of our boards of health. Considering their limi- 
tations, by insufficient laws and inadequate financial 
support, and often lax or hostile public opinion, they 
have accomplished marvels, and have been more free 
from "graft" and corruption than almost any other 
of our public institutions. We should strengthen their 
hands and praise their efforts much more freely. They 



THE PROBLEM OF DISEASE 275 

will not do their duty any less faithfully for a little 
generous and well-timed applause. 

At the same time we must remember that a hos- 
pital, an asylum, founded and supported by the rich, 
is not a thing to which society can point with pride as 
some worthy achievement; it is rather a badge of 
shame, a confession of failure. Charity is not a solu- 
tion of the problem of poverty, but an evasion; not 
a forsaking of social sins, but an attempt to compound 
for them. In great, rich America there ought to be 
no poverty, no charitable institutions, because every 
one ought to have sufficient for his needs. Whatever 
provision in a social way is found to be necessary for 
the treatment of disease should be made by society as 
a whole — should be no charity, but a common enter- 
prise for mutual good. 

Some kind of insurance of wage earners against 
sickness, however, is a greatly needed step forward, 
a form of social justice that cannot long be denied, es- 
pecially where the sickness is caused by occupation. 
Of course, what the worker chiefly wants is not sick 
benefits, but health. It is good when sick to know 
that the whole family are not to suffer from hunger 
and cold because the breadwinner is disabled, but it is 
still better when the breadwinner is able to work and 
earn steady wages. Nevertheless, while bending all 
energies to the prevention of disease, society should not 
neglect provision for those who meanwhile become its 
victims. Society cannot escape this obligation, because 
society is chiefly blameworthy for the continuance of 
disease. 



276 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

Insurance against accident is as important as insur- 
ance against disease. The business, not the individ- 
ual, should bear this burden, which will be passed on 
to society in price of product. In the matter of 
compensating workmen for accidents Wisconsin is a 
pioneer State, as in so many other economic and 
social reforms. A compensation act has been in 
force about two years, and up to January 1, 191 4, 
there had been 6,894 claims under the act for compen- 
sation. Of these all but 156 were settled automati- 
cally; the smaller number required arbitration by the 
Industrial Commission. The injured workmen were 
paid $396,354.73, which went to the injured persons 
direct. Hitherto, the courts have awarded each year 
about $220,000 as damages for injuries, only a small 
part of which ever reached the workmen, the greater 
part being absorbed in the expenses of litigation. In- 
terests hitherto conflicting have cooperated in promot- 
ing safety, and this has reduced the number of acci- 
dents greatly. A certain percentage of accidents is 
inevitable, but there is no doubt that this percentage 
may be reduced, by proper carefulness, to an almost 
vanishing point ; and that whatever remains should be 
treated as part of the cost of production. 

The United States Steel Corporation claims to 
spend every year $5,000,000 for the welfare of its 30,- 
000 workers, of which $2,000,000 is for the sick and 
injured. It has made "safety first" the motto every- 
where, and in six years $2,500,000 has been spent to 
prevent accidents, while $750,000 is now devoted each 
year to maintaining and improving such devices. In 



THE PROBLEM OF DISEASE 277 

addition to these things, an old-age pension fund of 
nearly $12,000,000 has been established. I cannot 
vouch for the correctness of these figures, but the mere 
fact that this great corporation thinks it worth while 
to make public such claims shows how the importance 
of social welfare has increased within a decade. At 
the same time, it must be recognized that there is a 
prejudice among workers against benefit funds of a 
private character. It is freely charged and widely be- 
lieved that certain firms and corporations which have 
made much of their philanthropic work for their em- 
ployees so administer benefit funds (mostly composed 
of sums withheld from wages) as to swell their own 
profits and make the "benefits" to employees illusory. 
Only a public system, administered by State officials, 
can ever be free from suspicion of some ulterior object. 
It has been previously pointed out that social better- 
ments, as well as social evils, are interlocked, like the 
directorates of some of our great financial institutions. 
It therefore follows that betterment in one direction 
almost of necessity leads to other betterments. In 
Germany, for example, the State provision against 
sickness has greatly stimulated the crusade against dis- 
ease, in hope of reducing sickness to the minimum and 
so decreasing the burden of sick benefits. Sana- 
toriums for tuberculous patients, hospitals for the 
treatment of many other forms of disease, convalescent 
homes, and like public and private institutions, have 
sprung up in large numbers all over Germany. In- 
deed, it is agreed among those who have studied the 
operation of social insurance in Germany that the 



2J% THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

chief result of the system, at any rate its most valuable 
result, has not been the direct monetary benefits to 
the workers, but the immense educative influence it 
has had. Benefits, or any other form of financial re- 
lief, can only minimize and palliate industrial evils; 
education tends to remove them. The worker is not 
slow to learn that better than insurance is to need no 
insurance; to have possession and free use of all the 
powers of body and mind is much more to his interest 
than any sort of compensation for their loss. Given 
health, employment, and fair wages, insurance is only 
an anchor to windward in desperate cases, the main 
value of which is to give a sense of security to the 
workers that greatly promotes their happiness aud 
efficiency. 

The experience of Germany shows another thing: 
one valuable result of social insurance is marked 
stimulus to the progress of medicine and surgery. The 
medical profession has been put on its mettle by the 
increased social demand for the best treatment and 
the quickest results, and in consequence there have 
been remarkable discoveries. Progress in surgery has 
perhaps been most remarkable, at least it is most spec- 
tacular. Photographs lately published show wonder- 
ful results in the surgical treatment of cases of indus- 
trial accidents. One series shows a man horribly mu- 
tilated, having lost the greater part of both arms and 
both legs; a trunk and four stumps was what the 
surgeons had to work upon. Such a man would, only 
a few years ago, have been regarded as a hopeless 
cripple, condemned for the rest of his life to be a 



THE PROBLEM OF DISEASE 2/9 

burden to himself and his family, or to society. The 
next view shows the man fitted with artificial arms 
and legs, and finally he is pictured at a bench in a 
factory, again earning his living like any other work- 
man — no, unlike any other, but still earning it. There 
seems no limit this side of the grave to what modern 
science and ingenuity can accomplish, and through the 
pulmotor it has even succeeded in restoring the 
dead to life. Many of the things that are now every- 
day matters would have been hailed as undoubted 
miracles in any past age, and there is no reason to 
question that still more wonderful things will be 
achieved in the future. 

One of the names that the followers of Jesus have 
delighted to give him is the Great Physician. The 
record tells us that he went about the towns of Galilee 
"proclaiming the Good News of the kingdom and 
healing all manner of disease." No idea of the Gospel 
can leave out the healing of the sick and the preven- 
tion of disease without leaving out the Christ him- 
self. 



The new science of eugenics, so highly lauded and so 
often ridiculed, is intended as the ultimate solution of 
the problem of disease. It promises at least to dis- 
pose of those diseases that occur by transmission 
from one generation to another, including mere ten- 
dency to disease, or constitutional weakness. The 
State will ultimately be compelled, in self-defense, to 



280 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

set some limits to the marriage of the unfit. The ad- 
vance in medicine and surgery, the multiplication of 
charities, and the growth of philanthropic sentiment 
are now preserving thousands of lives that in former 
times were extinguished by the stern law of the sur- 
vival of the fittest. We are thus carefully preserving 
the mentally and physically degenerate folk who used 
to perish miserably, and they are propagating their 
kind faster than the normal population increases. The 
descendants of such people constitute an increasing 
reservoir of disease, vice, and crime, and especially of 
prostitution. This cannot be suffered to continue un- 
checked without danger, nay, certainty of general race 
degeneration. 

Since the State undertakes now to regulate mar- 
riage, and issues marriage licenses, it has already as- 
sumed the right to say who shall and who shall not 
be united in lawful wedlock. It is but a step further 
in principle for the State, as the organ of society, to 
require a physician's certificate of sound mental and 
bodily condition, before a license will be issued. No 
man or woman affected by a contagious or transmissi- 
ble disease, such as tuberculosis or syphilis, is fit to 
marry; and to ensure its own protection society has 
right as well as power to say that the unfit shall not 
marry. It is right in principle to do all this, but at 
present inexpedient, as the example of Wisconsin has 
shown. That State took the lead in requiring presen- 
tation of a medical certificate of fitness at the license 
bureau, with the double result of driving thousands 
out of the State for the performance of the marriage 



THE PROBLEM OF DISEASE 28 1 

ceremony, and the forming of many illicit unions by 
those too poor or too something else to take this 
trouble. In other words, the law is evaded or defied, 
because it has not behind it a sufficient public senti- 
ment. A long process of popular education will be 
necessary before such a statute will be effective. 

Nevertheless, by whatever means may be necessary, 
the principle must be applied. It may be necessary 
to take more stringent measures to prevent illicit 
unions of the unfit who are debarred from legal mar- 
riage, even to the extent of compulsory sterilization of 
such persons. This would be comparatively easy in 
the case of such as are gathered in institutions. So- 
ciety cannot long evade the compulsion of facts, and 
will find itself constrained to put an effectual end to 
this means of race degeneration. It is only an un- 
ethical squeamishness that prevents us from looking 
the problem fairly in the face, discussing it thoroughly 
until all the conditions are understood, and then 
adopting with intelligent firmness the one sovereign 
remedy. 



CHAPTER IX 



THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 



In our survey of social ills we have found poverty 
at the bottom of all, as sole cause, chief cause, or ag- 
gravating cause. For several years past we have had 
to face this social condition : the greatest crops in the 
history of our nation gathered in (valued in 19 13 at 
$10,000,000,000 in round numbers), abundance of 
food for our own people and a large surplus for other 
countries less fortunate, and the highest prices for 
food that our people have ever paid. Something 
wrong? Who can doubt it? What is wrong? Who 
can doubt that! 

"The rich man must work to get an appetite for his 
dinner; the poor man must work to get a dinner for 
his appetite." The old jest is true, though it is no 
jesting matter. But there is this further important 
difference : When both have done their work, the 
rich man has too much dinner and the poor man not 
enough. At one end of the social scale men are dying 
of starvation, at the other end of surfeit. God said to 
Adam: "By the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat 
bread," but Mammon says to his subjects : "By the 
sweat of another's face shalt thou eat pie." Dives 
still fares sumptuously every day, while Lazarus sits at 
his gate and humbly asks to be fed with the crumbs 

282 



THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 283 

that fall from his table. The thing that is wrong is 
that the product of the earth is so unequally divided 
— that the many live in misery and the few in luxury. 
Even before we begin to search for cause and cure, 
the very existence of the fact outrages our sense of 
justice, rouses to protest all the finer instincts of our 
humanity. 

It is well to face at the outset the staggering pro- 
portions of our problem. Mr. Robert Hunter, one 
of the highest authorities on the subject, declares that 
not fewer than 10,000,000 persons in the United 
States live in poverty — that is to say, in actual desti- 
tution and suffering. The number of persons in acute 
distress is variable, from not less than 14 per cent, in 
prosperous times to 20 per cent, in bad times. There 
is another great element of our population that con- 
tinually lives in a condition that may also be described 
as poverty, inasmuch as they never have quite enough 
for their wants. It is not merely that their desires 
are unsatisfied — when it comes to that none of us have 
all that we desire — but they lack food, shelter, and 
clothing sufficient to keep them in good health and 
economic efficiency. Three-fourths of our male wage- 
earners receive less than $750 a year, the lowest sum 
on which a normal family can live a normal life. Half 
of the women wage-earners, as we have already seen, 
fail to receive a living wage. 



Poverty is as unnecessary as disease, is as curable 
as disease, and for the same reason : we now know the 



284 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

cause and hence we know just where to apply the 
cure. And, as with disease, the only cure is preven- 
tion. 

The cause of poverty may be stated in a single word, 
exploitation. Exploitation is the power of man to 
use his fellow man for his own profit. It runs the 
whole gamut from chattel slavery through serfdom to 
wage slavery. Exploitation enables a man to enjoy 
what he has not earned, by robbing his brother of what 
the latter has earned. This produces the wealth of the 
few and the poverty of the many. There may be con- 
tributing causes, but this is fundamental and chief. 

But how did exploitation come to be ? It developed 
gradually out of a simpler and juster system. In a 
primitive state of society, where all are trying to get 
a living and succeeding indifferently, let us imagine 
two men, A and B. A has a weaker body or is less 
inclined to physical exertion, but is intelligent, while 
B has strong muscles and not much else. A proposes 
that they join forces, A contributing his wit and skill 
and B doing most of the work. The result is that the 
two, working thus, produce considerably more than 
they had both produced working separately. It is a 
good arrangement for both, so good that C and 
D ask or are asked after a time to join. The scheme 
works perfectly, so long as each man plays fair and 
the product is equally shared ; and all are equally satis- 
fied. In some such way originated the prehistoric 
communistic groups. 

But after a time A sets that bright mind of his at 
work on the problem how to get more than an equal 



THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 285 

share. First he devises a way by which land, instead 
of being held in common, is allotted in parcels to each 
one of the tribe or group, and in process of time the 
principle of private ownership of land is established. 
Then he engages E, F, and G to work for him, and by 
way of inducement offers them a fixed amount of 
product, instead of an equal share of product. They 
accept, and, after paying them, he has a surplus which 
he exchanges for other commodities and rapidly in- 
creases in wealth. Later he hires H, I, and J, who 
have in some way lost possession of land, at a lower 
wage; and, if they are dissatisfied, lets them go and 
hires others for still less, until finally the share of the 
workers in the product, instead of being equal, is only 
enough to give them a bare subsistence. This is the 
capitalistic system, exploitation, profit. 

But, as time passes on, E, F, G and the rest of 
their alphabetical brothers become more intelligent; 
they at length comprehend the situation; and one fine 
day they announce to capitalist A : "We are going to 
end this way of doing business. You have used your 
superior intelligence to defraud us of the larger part 
of our product. We are tired of working to make 
you wealthy. We propose to use the accumulated tools 
and experience of the race in production, but to re- 
turn to the original method of sharing alike in the 
product. If you wish to work and share with us, 
very well, but if not, go your ways." That is social 
reform in a nutshell. The coming revolution is to be, 
as Hyndman well puts it, "a complete economic and 
ethical and social transformation, from competition to 



286 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

cooperation, from domination to equality, from slavery 
to freedom." Socializing industry means that every 
man will be guaranteed the product of his own labor. 
Nobody can object to this, save one who is bent on 
seizing the product of another's labor. But few 
among us can see these things as they are, for the 
wealthy class look at everything through colored spec- 
tacles whose name is Greed, while over the eyes of the 
working class is a bandage whose name is Ignorance. 

Exploitation became successful first of all because 
a portion of society was able to appropriate to itself 
the land that was the heritage of all. Life, liberty, and 
the pursuit of happiness are inalienable human rights. 
Every American is taught that and most Ameri- 
cans profess to believe it. Every human being has 
the same right to live as every other, no more, no less. 
That necessarily includes the principle that every man 
has the same right as every other to gain the means 
of living, and that again implies equal access to the 
earth from which alone a living can be secured. Land, 
like air, water, and light, is nature's gift to the race; 
the Gospel of Jesus is emphatic on that point. It be- 
longs to everybody and can be the exclusive possession 
of nobody. Custom or statute can give to individuals 
a legal title to exclusive ownership of land, but nothing 
can give an ethical title. Ethically, the ownership of 
land is robbery of the many by the few, and because of 
that robbery we have a civilization spoiled by wealth 
at the top and by poverty at the bottom. 

Those who have seized upon the common heritage 
of all men and now claim exclusive ownership of it 



THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 287 

are simply robbers of their fellows. This use of the 
word "robbers" and "robbery" is intended as the true 
description of the ethical character of the transaction, 
not its legal or recognized character. This particular 
form of robbery has been legalized in many nations 
for centuries, and has therefore become socially re- 
spectable, without, however, changing the essential 
character of the action. Slavery once had behind it 
centuries of legal authority and social approval, but 
nothing could give an ethical character to the hold- 
ing in bondage of one man by another. But this legal- 
izing and social sanction does greatly affect the ques- 
tion of personal guilt. The extreme abolitionists of 
the last century were wrong in declaring that every 
slaveholder was guilty of the unpardonable sin, and 
the social reformer of to-day would be equally wrong 
in declaring every landowner to be a thief. The work- 
ing man who has invested his painfully saved dollars 
in a bit of land that he may build a house wherein he 
and his may have a home of their own is a very dif- 
ferent person from a burglar or a footpad. It is the 
system that is wrong, not the individual. 

We can understand now what has caused the sudden 
prominence in the United States of social and eco- 
nomic problems, so that the man in the street is talk- 
ing about subjects that two decades ago were dis- 
cussed only by a few experts. The safety-valve has 
been tied down and the steam-pressure has risen dan- 
gerously near the bursting point. There is no outlet 
to-day for surplus laborers to flow toward unoccu- 
pied land. The old song is no longer true, Uncle Sam 



288 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

is not rich enough to give us all a farm. Little land 
that can be profitably worked — practically none — is 
available for settlers. Not even cheap land is any 
longer to be bought, save that which is arid or ex- 
hausted or far from any possible market. The peo- 
ple's land has all been stolen. A favorite exhortation 
of some to the workless laborer of the East has been, 
Go West and take up a farm. It would be as sensible 
to exhort a Western laborer who is out of work to 
go East and take up a factory. The one is as feasible 
as the other, for in these days either demands capital 
— the one thing that the workless man has not and 
cannot get. 

It is quite true, as the Secretary of Agriculture has 
pointed out, that less than half the arable land is 
actually tilled — or approximately 400,000,000 out of 
935,000,000 acres. But this vast area is kept from 
cultivation by private ownership, and is held in this 
unproductive state until the time comes when it will 
be profitable to cultivate it. 

Beginning with and resting upon this misappropria- 
tion of land, a great system of exploitation has been 
built up. Those who found themselves without land 
were compelled to labor for those who did possess it; 
and thus a class of hired laborers came into existence. 
The land was not sufficient to furnish all of them 
employment as their numbers grew, and some became 
domestic servants. As commerce and handicrafts in- 
creased, larger numbers were demanded as helpers in 
these new activities. When the new era of machinery 
and the factory began, there was a tremendous in- 



THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 289 

crease of those who worked for a wage. Now society 
is divided into two great classes, the employers of 
labor and those who are employed. The growth of 
the system, once started, was almost automatic, cer- 
tainly normal. We can trace each stage of its prog- 
ress clearly. 

And throughout the system the one feature runs 
and constitutes its characteristic: exploitation, the 
gaining of profit. Men no longer have equal right 
to live. There is nothing to prevent, at the present 
rate of advance, a few hundred men, or even a single 
man, from ultimately owning the entire resources of 
America, while the rest of the 90,000,000 — or the 
200,000,000, as they probably would be by that time 
— would lie completely at their mercy, dependent upon 
them for their very life. That is to say, there is noth- 
ing in our present laws or economic system to prevent 
the reduction of our social system to this ultimate ab- 
surdity; but long before such result could be reached 
revolution would put summary stop to the process. 
Yet to any sober thinker the present social order is 
precisely as indefensible on any principles of justice as 
one-man ownership would be. 

Business professes above all things to be practical; 
its boast is that it takes things as it finds them. But 
this, which it regards as justification for all things, is 
its sentence of condemnation. It is man's task not to 
take the world as he finds it, in the sense of being 
complacently satisfied with whatever is, but to make 
the world that he finds a better world to live and work 
in. But modern business has contented itself with 



29O THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

devising machinery to make profits to pile up capital 
to make more profits to pile up more capital — and so 
on ad infinitum. This is not progress; it is swinging 
around a circle and getting nowhere. Modern indus- 
trialism has as its noble end the employment of the 
smallest possible number of workers, at the least pos- 
sible wage, for the longest possible work day, at the 
hardest possible toil, to make the largest possible profit. 1 
Hence profit always and of necessity involves getting 
more than one gives. It is appropriating labor power 
or its product without . giving an equivalent. When 
the highwayman does this with violence we call it 
robbery; when the confidence man does it by a trick 
we call it swindling; when the manufacturer or mer- 
chant does it we call it business. All three take ad- 
vantage of human weakness, ignorance, or necessity. 
The ethical quality of highway robbery, selling "gold" 
bricks, and business is precisely the same. Our social 
ethics make a distinction, but there is no difference. 

Yes, there is one important practical difference: 
profit is an eminently respectable form of theft. It 
supports thousands of pious people; it maintains 
churches and foreign missions; it endows schools; it 
makes possible (and necessary) all our hospitals and 
asylums and sanatoriums. But it remains theft, for it 
is the taking of product from those who have pro- 
duced it and giving it to others who have produced 
nothing. This is done under process of law and in the 
most seemly ways, but it violates the law "Thou shalt 
not steal." It is the guilt of society, not of the indi- 

1 Henderson, "Pay-Day," p. 49. 



THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 29 1 

vidual, and when society becomes awake to the essen- 
tially unethical nature of business it will be not far 
from the kingdom of God. 

I once thought and said — may God forgive! — that 
it was the duty of some men to get rich and use their 
wealth for the kingdom of God. Many still hold that 
view, little understanding what "getting rich" means 
and how impossible it is that the kingdom which is 
righteousness, joy, and peace can be forwarded by 
the unrighteous Mammon. "Business enterprise" is 
the euphonious name of all manner of rottenness and 
wickedness, and "business success" involves violation 
of every law, human or divine, that stands in the way, 
by men of steel-wire nerves and asbestos morals. Said 
Charles S. Mellen in his testimony before the Inter- 
state Commerce Commission, May 14, 1914: "All I 
was after was results for the New Haven road, and I 
would have done business with the devil himself had 
it been necessary." The only exceptional thing about 
this declaration is its cynical frankness. Getting rich 
is possible only by robbery of one's brother, spoliation 
of the helpless, exploitation of the weak. One under- 
stands sometimes too late that the money one makes is 
the price of innocent blood, and knows something of 
the horror of Judas as he contemplates his gains. Not 
many of the capitalistic class, however, have come as 
yet to join the late Joseph Fels, who said, "I purpose 
to use my fortune in overthrowing the damnable sys- 
tem which enables me to acquire it." In the day of 
Jehovah's faithfulness the prophet tells us that "Holi- 
ness to Jehovah" was to be engraved on the bells of 



292 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

the horses, and every household pot should be as holy 
as those in the Temple. In our day "Exploitation of 
the weak" may be read by the discerning eye on every 
product of man; all things are involved in a common 
degradation. It is woven into every yard of cloth, it 
is watermarked on every sheet of paper, it is chiseled 
on the portal of every building, it is cast into every 
tool, it is the tag-mark of every piece of merchandise. 

What does our favorite American word "succeed" 
mean, conjugated in all its moods and tenses? Clever 
exploitation, nothing more. Mr. John D. Rockefeller, 
in one of his autobiographic contributions, said that 
the foundation of his fortune was the saving of $50 
and loaning it to a farmer at interest. He thus made 
the great discovery, as he put it, that "he could make 
his money work for him." What he really discovered 
was, of course, that he could make the farmer work 
for him — money never works — and he was quite cor- 
rect in saying that is the origin of his fortune. He 
has been making men work for him ever since. That 
is the story of all fortunes, large or small. Anybody 
who possesses a dollar or a dollar's worth beyond the 
product of his own labor has acquired the product of 
some other man's labor. 

Karl Marx defined wealth as the accumulation of 
commodities. It was that in primitive times, perhaps 
it still should be that, but it is that no longer. Most 
of what is now called "wealth" is not wealth at all. 
Real wealth is something that has been dug out of 
the earth and shaped by human labor into something 
useful. Real wealth may be touched and weighed and 



THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 293 

measured. A few millions only of the vast fortune 
credited to Mr. Rockefeller are visible to the eye, but 
the great bulk of his "wealth" does not consist in so 
many barrels of oil, so many tons of copper and coal, 
so many buildings and acres, but in his ability to pro- 
duce through the labor of others indefinite quantities 
of oil and copper in years to come. In other words, 
the larger part of his wealth does not really exist: it 
is merely a mortgage on the future, command of the 
services of other men, power to assess a tax on wealth 
yet to be produced. This "wealth" consists of pieces 
of paper, called "stocks," on which dividends are to 
be paid out of future earnings; and other pieces of 
paper, called "bonds," on which interest must be paid 
out of the products of industry. 

The "wealth" of this great captain of industry 
turns out, therefore, on analysis, to consist mainly of 
two elements : first, the power he has under the law to 
diminish the real wealth of the coming generation; 
second, ability to control the labor of other men 
through his ownership of the means of production. It 
is inevitable that there should be serious inquiry into 
the ethical foundations of such privilege. What right 
can any man plead to the possession of such power? 
Men talk of the "sacredness of property." But in 
what sense is there sacredness in the right to tax the 
industry of the future? In the various enterprises 
that this single man controls there are employed a 
great host of men, whose life and happiness and that 
of their families are dependent on him. He wields 
a power greater than that which we usually describe 



294 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

as "despotic'' and less subject to checks, over a num- 
ber of men, women, and children larger than the popu- 
lation of entire States. And the question now before 
the house is, whether such power shall be permitted to 
continue — whether it is founded on any equitable 
principle in the first place, and whether it is a safe 
power in a democracy. Or, to go even closer to the 
root of things, whether a democracy is possible where 
such economic despotism exists. 

If any human right deserves to be called "inalien- 
able" it is the right to work, for the right to work is 
synonymous with the right to live. But under capi- 
talism work is not a right but a favor, to be granted 
or withheld at the will of an employer, who will give 
work only to so many and under such conditions as 
will promise him profit. It is no exaggeration, there- 
fore, but precise statement of fact, to say that under 
our present industrial system all outside of the capi- 
talist class are living on sufferance. If they were de- 
nied opportunity of work, any of them could continue 
to live only until they had consumed their present small 
possessions. This is complete perversion of the so- 
cial function of wealth or property. The true func- 
tion of property is to support life; it is a reserve of 
society, like a sum in the savings bank, to be drawn 
on at need or to establish a new enterprise. The capi- 
talistic system has turned property into the deadliest 
foe of life. Every consideration of safety, of com- 
fort, of improvement in the arts of living, is sacrificed 
to the great god Profit. 

Every invention that could increase or cheapen pro- 



THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 295 

duction has been eagerly seized by capitalists, pro- 
vided only profit could be foreseen; if it were more 
profitable to suppress an invention than to use it, that 
has been done; but inventions and improvements de- 
signed merely to make life safer and labor easier have 
been introduced only by the strong arm of law, and 
after a hard struggle. Why not? Great is Profit of 
the capitalists. Fifty years ago John Stuart Mill 
wrote : "It is questionable if all the mechanical inven- 
tions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any 
human being." It is even more doubtful to-day than 
when these words were written. As a result of this 
system capitalized wealth has been increasing in geo- 
metric ratios. The accumulations of each generation 
are laid by capitalism as an additional burden on the 
productive energies of the generation to come. The 
system must break down of its own weight; the time 
will come, if it has not come already, when men can 
no longer pay this tax and live. 

"Capital," says Professor Small, "is as different 
from capitalism as water from drowning." * Society 
needs capital; the capitalist lags superfluous on the 
stage. A few rich individuals and groups now con- 
trol the land, mines, timber, water-power and other 
natural resources of the country, and are in a fair 
way to own the arable soil also; and have added to 
these the factories, machinery, and other means of 
production. All the sources of wealth are either in 
their possession, or rapidly tending thither. Great 
wealth grows like the small boy's snow ball, only it 
1 "Between Two Eras," p. 329. 



296 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

needs nobody to turn it over. The chief evils of so- 
ciety grow out of this condition of things, and the 
others are greatly aggravated by it. The remedy is 
as simple as the condition: take ownership of natural 
resources and tools of production from the few and 
give these things to the many, the workers whose labor 
alone now makes them or can ever make them produc- 
tive. Until every man has the right to work, oppor- 
tunity to convert his labor power into means of living, 
and to enjoy what he produces, there will be poverty, 
there will be disease, there will be vice, there will be 
crime in ever-increasing mass. 

The great fortunes have been justified by econo- 
mists and moralists on the ground that exceptional in- 
dustrial and financial genius deserves an exceptional 
reward; and society can well afford to pay such re- 
ward, because possibility of capturing so great a prize 
is continual stimulus to ability. But some facts are 
hard to reconcile with this attempted defense. The 
late J. Pierpont Morgan was entitled, we are assured, 
to his hundred millions (more or less) because he was 
the one great financial genius of his generation. But 
one day Mr. Morgan dies — and nothing happens. If 
his eulogists were correct the loss of the one great 
financial genius of the age ought to produce something 
like a cataclysm in High Finance, but, as matter of 
fact, the death of one of his thousand-dollar-a-year 
clerks would have made quite as much trouble. In- 
deed, it might have been harder to find another good 
clerk than to find a successor to Mr. Morgan. The 
necessity of the Morgans to society has been much ex- 



THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 297 

aggerated — the black-whiskered pirate of that name 
two centuries ago was as much needed as the great 
financier. 

Indeed, the banker and the pirate have much more 
in common than a name. Men of Wall Street are 
often spoken of by those who should have more sense 
as if they had done great things in building up our 
railways and developing our great industries. The 
fact is just the contrary. The Morgans never produce 
a dollar's equivalent of wealth in all their baleful his- 
tory. All the railways, all the great industries, have 
been developed by the capital, the sacrifices, and the 
labors of others. The Morgans do nothing but manip- 
ulate pieces of paper, and gather into their coffers the 
wealth that others have produced. When enterprises 
have been advanced by others to a point where they 
see an opportunity, they step in and by "reorganiza- 
tions" and "consolidations," involving much "water- 
ing" of stocks and "cutting of melons," they get to 
themselves great wealth — and incidentally they often 
ruin the property. This is piracy made respectable, 
but piracy still. 

II 

Exploitation is the guilt, not of individuals, but of 
an industrial system which operates automatically, 
without reference to the will or character of indi- 
viduals. The income of one of our great industrial 
nobles is said this year to be $70,000,000. He may go 
to Europe for a year — it would be the least harmful 



298 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

thing he could do, possibly — he may even die, but next 
year his income, or that of his estate, will be $80,000,- 
000. A great fortune can no longer be dissipated by 
spendthrift heirs — if it could, some of the Vanderbilts 
and Goulds would now be looking for jobs — they can 
only spend the income, and that with difficulty. "From 
shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves'' no longer describes a so- 
cial fact. And what is the source of this vast income ? 
Nothing that this great noble does; he has ceased to 
work; "his money works for him" — that is, compels 
other men to work for him. This income of his is 
interest, dividends, profit, paid out of the annual prod- 
uct of labor. Every wage-earner is taxed that this 
income may be paid. It must be paid, first of all, like 
all other income; and the laborer will be paid out of 
what may be left. There are about 35,000,000 pro- 
ductive workers in the United States, and each of 
them paid this man last year two dollars out of his 
hard earnings. For what? 

The greater the amount of capital, real or fictitious 
(and the larger part is fictitious), that such men as 
this have "invested" in various enterprises, the more 
workers must pay them out of their product, and the 
smaller will be the amount left for those whose labor 
produces all the wealth of the nation. Will anybody 
look at these facts soberly and say that this is a ra- 
tional system, defensible by any person possessed of 
sound reason ? Will anybody look at them in the light 
of ethics and say that this system is not inherently 
wicked, that it is not a plain breach of the command- 
ment, "Thou shalt not steal" ? 



THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 299 

It is true that there was exploitation before the in- 
dustrial revolution. None of our social ills are new; 
most of them are of hoary antiquity; but steam and 
machinery have caused them to grow like Alice in 
Wonderland after she tasted the mushroom. In a few 
decades moderate evils have become colossal. All so- 
cial organization is reversal of the law of nature. In 
nature there is fierce struggle for existence in which 
the fittest survive; social organization is limiting the 
power of the strong and clever to exploit the weak. 
Civilization is enforcement of artificial equality in 
place of natural inequality. Our present industrial 
system is barbarism, pure and simple, not civilization, 
because it permits rule of the strong and compels 
slavery of the weak. Progress requires a more com- 
plete socialization of industrial forces, and is possible 
on no other terms. 

Capitalism aims only at making the largest possible 
margin of profit, even if thereby it makes the smallest 
possible margin of life. The humane and Christian 
character of some capitalists may do something to 
ameliorate the system, but can do little or nothing to 
modify its essential inhumanity. On the other hand, 
there is often exhibition by the working class of 
solidarity and spirit of sacrifice for the common good, 
that even the Christian Church, with all its preaching 
of brotherhood and inculcation of sacrifice, cannot 
parallel. For too often the preaching of the Church 
is "just preaching." In church men profess the creed 
of brotherhood ; they repeat together the command- 
ment of Jesus to love one another. They go next day 



300 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

to business, and in every word and act profess the 
creed of hatred ; the strong trample the weaker under 
foot, the shrewd strips the less shrewd of his last dol- 
lar. And the worst of it is that men do not see this 
hypocrisy; they are quite unconscious of this intel- 
lectual contradiction and moral suicide ; they talk with 
straight face of "carrying their Christianity into busi- 
ness"! 

As we have seen, individual ownership of the soil is 
one great pillar of exploitation, while ownership of 
tools is the other. Man is the only animal who can 
use tools, and the progress of civilization may be ac- 
curately traced by the invention of new and more ef- 
ficient tools. So long as these were simple and inex- 
pensive no harm was done by permitting private own- 
ership of them. But in these latter days the simple 
tool has been replaced in industry by the complex and 
expensive machine. A generation ago even, a few 
days (or, at most, a few weeks) of labor would supply 
any worker with a set of tools for his trade ; now not 
a lifetime's labor would make a poor man the owner 
of the machine by which he gets his bread. This cost- 
liness of tools throws all production into the hands of 
the capitalist class. The poor man, robbed, on the one 
hand, of his access to the soil, and, on the other, of 
ownership of his tools, is the veritable slave of the 
tool-and-land-owning employer — a wage slave, to be 
sure, not a chattel slave, but slave nevertheless; for 
the essence of slavery is dependence on the will of 
another for means of life. 

Consider what this means to the worker. Tele- 



THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 3OI 

graph operators receive from $25 to $80 a month. 
Two operators working a wire between New York and 
Philadelphia can handle 500 messages in a nine-hour 
day. At 25 cents a message the company receives for 
this service $125, of which it pays the operators from 
$2 to $3 each, and has $120 profit. What person of 
any sanity will defend the equity of such a transac- 
tion? Consider what it means to the public. The 
Bureau of Labor, in its report to Congress March 3, 
19 1 3, showed that, while under the last agreement 
miners' wages had been increased $4,000,000, the op- 
erating companies had increased prices of coal, os- 
tensibly to recoup this loss, but really to the amount of 
$17,450,000. The companies, therefore, gained $13,- 
450,000 by a transaction that, in advance, they pro- 
tested would be utterly ruinous to them, pocketing an 
additional $3 for every $1 paid in increased wages — 
and the consumer of coal pays all. Under cloak of 
doing justice to the poor miner, albeit a justice wrung 
from them by an aroused public opinion, the opera- 
tors commit a new robbery. 

Exploitation is just as indefensible on principles 
of the Gospel as it is on economic principles. It is 
the great immorality, the fundamental evil of society, 
not only because of its observed anti-social effects, but 
because it is a breach of the command of Jesus, "Thou 
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.'' For no man 
would submit to be exploited if he had any means of 
self-defense. The exploiter's attempts at partial rec- 
ompense in the various forms of charity, philanthropy, 
pensions, and profit-sharing are confession, but not 



302 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

restitution. They neither imply repentance nor prom- 
ise amendment. "Most philanthropy," says Professor 
Ward, "is mere temporary patchwork which has to 
be done over and over again. It does not aim or 
desire to do the kind of good that will prevent the 
recurrence of the conditions that have made it neces- 
sary. It is static, not dynamic." * The United Chari- 
ties Society of Chicago found that 70,000 persons ap- 
plied for aid in that city in 1912. The cases were 
carefully investigated, and the following causes are 
given for the poverty of 17,000 cases: 

Unemployment, 4,620; acute illness, 4,311; insufficient 
earnings, 1,576; chronic physical disability, 1,443; tuber- 
culosis, 1,361; maternity, 1,285; intemperance, 1,205; ac ~ 
cident, 674; old age, 634; moral deficiency, 468; impris- 
onment, 388; idleness, 360; bad housing, 318; begging 
tendency, 2J2) subnormal mind, 239; insanity, 237; 
venereal disease, 202; industrial accident, 188; immigrant 
within three years, 177; incompetence, 157; epilepsy, 140; 
occupational disease, 46. 

The list should be attentively pondered by those ex- 
cellent persons in our churches who still insist that 
poverty is due to defective character, and can be com- 
pletely cured by the practice of industry, sobriety, and 
economy. The italicized cases are the only ones that 
can with any plausibility be attributed to defects of 
character; all the rest, and perhaps these also, should 
be charged to remediable social conditions, remediable 
because poverty is the root of all. No individual char- 

1 "Applied Sociology," p. 29. 



THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 303 

acter can overcome these unfavorable social conditions 
under all circumstances; and organized charity has 
about as much effect on them as it has on the revolu- 
tions of Jupiter's moons. 

It is growing perception of these facts among the 
working class that so embitters them, and inclines 
them at times to the use of forcible means of redress. 
How many who read the newspapers have reflected 
that men in the midst of a Christian civilization are 
not moved to undertake crimes like those of the Mc- 
Namaras and their associates, until there has been 
bred in them an overmastering sense of wrong and 
injustice, for which the laws provide no remedy — 
which society, indeed, refuses seriously to consider? 
But, in all the mass of comment on such crimes, how 
many influential voices have been lifted up to urge 
inquiry into the cause of this sense of injustice? How 
many have asked whether American workingmen have 
wrongs for which redress is impossible under our so- 
cial system? And, if it should turn out on inquiry 
that they have such wrongs, could we expect them to 
submit to them without violent protest? 

If we will not consider the justice of our attitude, 
perhaps we may be more accessible to ideas of its ex- 
pensiveness. It was publicly stated that the trial of 
the McNamaras and their associates, thirty-eight men 
in all, cost the government a million dollars. But not 
one dollar was expended by the government to find 
out what caused the crime, and if the cause is remov- 
able. Does this strike the thoughtful taxpayer as good 
economy? Is this the best return he can expect for 



304 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

his money? Our lavish charities are just so much 
money thrown away. If an equivalent sum were 
burned every year, quite as much would be accom- 
plished in the way of decreasing human misery. The 
exploiter turns out more nakedness in a day than Dor- 
cas can clothe in a year, causes more disease in a 
week than St. Francis can relieve in a lifetime, drives 
more men and women into vice and crime in a year 
than the Salvation Army can rescue in a century. 
And we are only just beginning to question whether 
this exploiter, if he gives sterilized milk to a few 
babies, may not be the highest type of character and 
citizenship ! 

Ill 

The fundamental condition of physical life is suf- 
ficiency of food, sufficient not only in quantity to sat- 
isfy hunger, but in quality to nourish the body. Many 
have "enough to eat" and yet are unfed, because they 
lack what is known in dietetics as "a well-balanced 
ration." Enough is produced to feed all our people. 
Why, then, do they lack food? Why this high cost 
of living, which one of our American multi-million- 
aires gravely assures us is really the cost of high liv- 
ing? Is it true that the poor are not really poor, but 
only extravagant? Deficiency of food is far more 
serious than deficiency of clothing or bad housing. A 
well-nourished body may be subjected to cold and cjirt 
and bad air and feel them as hardships perhaps, buf 
not as dangers. In the past two decades the cost of 



THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 305 

living has risen twice as fast as wages, and, though 
wages have risen slowly, what does it profit a man to 
have his wages increased ten per cent, and his cost 
of living twenty per cent. ? Perhaps he may comfort 
himself with the reflection that he is better off than his 
fellow whose wages have not been raised at all, and 
still better off than his other fellow who is out of 
work and has no wages, but that is cold comfort. 
When one is hungry he cannot chuckle much because 
his neighbor is hungrier still, and perhaps half-frozen 
to boot. 

Here is one "why." The value of the food products 
of the United States, estimated on the basis of the 
official returns, is $6,000,000,000, while their cost to 
consumers is not far from $13,000,000,000. The dif- 
ference, considerably more than 100 per cent., is the 
necessary cost of transportation and handling, plus 
the unnecessary dividends on watered stocks and the 
profits of middlemen. The consumer has it in his 
power largely to eliminate the middleman, especially 
with the aid of the parcels post, and if he continues 
to suffer from this source it will be his own fault. The 
ease, safety, and profitableness of cooperative buying 
has been so fully demonstrated by European combina- 
tions of consumers that there remains nothing to say 
on the subject; all that is lacking is action. In collo- 
quial phrase, this matter is now "up to" the consumer 
himself. 

But the cost of transportation and handling is an- 
other matter. Watered stocks are beyond the con- 
sumer's reach. We are only beginning to appreciate 



306 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

the scandalous things that have been done by our great 
financiers, who are said to be so indispensable to us. 
The Adams Express Company began business with 
a valise as its total assets, and was capitalized out of 
its earnings. Its capital stock to-day represents no 
investment whatever by stockholders, but only sums 
that have been skilfully extracted from the people's 
pockets without getting the thieves put in jail. In 
some corporations dividends* are paid on "water," but 
the Adams Express dividends are paid on air. The 
same is true in the main of all the other express com- 
panies; investments, if any, have been so small as to 
be negligible; capitalization represents earning power, 
not investment; and the public is still paying to these 
buccaneering corporations a heavy annual tax on its 
willingness to let the companies continue their rob- 
bery. 

The railways are a little better, but not so much in 
principle as in degree. A physical valuation of the 
railways in the State of Kansas was undertaken a 
few years ago, with this result as to the Union Pacific : 
Actual cost value per mile, $27,297; could be repro- 
duced for $36,976 per mile ; is taxed at a valuation of 
$40,860 per mile; is capitalized at $146,391 per mile. 
It has, therefore, to earn dividends on over $100,000 
per mile of pure "water," so-called investments that 
represent no payment of money in the past and no 
value of any kind in the present. And, of course, 
the Union Pacific has been clamoring, with other rail- 
ways, that it must have higher rates for freight or it 
could not live! 



THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 307 

It is now seriously proposed that a physical valua- 
tion of all railways shall be undertaken as a prelimi- 
nary to possible acquisition of them by the govern- 
ment and the substitution of public for private owner- 
ship. This means, of course, the ultimate squeezing 
from their capitalization of the enormous quantity of 
"water" or fictitious value. This proposition has 
awakened once more those who on such occasions be- 
wail the hardship to innocent owners that would nec- 
essarily result. However unethical the original trans- 
actions, it is said, the stocks have passed into other 
hands; people have bought in good faith and paid 
good money for them. Now the truth is, as a little 
reflection will show any one, that this wail about 
widows and orphans and other innocents has no foun- 
dation in fact. When the squeezing process begins 
there will be no innocent owners. The facts about 
fictitious capitalization have been published far and 
wide. No person intelligent enough to get possession 
of a sum of money to invest in railway stocks can be 
rationally presumed to be ignorant of these facts. If 
he hereafter buys, or hereafter retains ownership of 
these securities, he does it with full knowledge of their 
origin and nature, and of the possibility of govern- 
ment action in the matter, and he is taking a gambler's 
chance on their future value. If he loses, he should 
bear his loss when it comes, as gamblers say, "like a 
dead game sport. " 

Mr. Thomas W. Lawson's writings on High Fi- 
nance have had a wide circulation, and have been de- 
scribed as a "howling success" — three parts howl to one 



308 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

of success, no doubt. The author may be as big a hum- 
bug as many people believe him to be, but his knowl- 
edge of finance and practical acquaintance with "se- 
curities" of all kinds are unquestioned. His figures 
have not been questioned by the world of High Fi- 
nance, and may, therefore, be accepted as substan- 
tially correct. He tells us that of the $60,000,000,000 
of stocks on the American market $40,000,000,000 
represents pure "water" ; nevertheless $2,000,000,000 
is paid on this fictitious value each year in dividends. 
This is pure theft and robbery, if there ever was such 
a thing. This is exploitation in its highest flower. 
It is a tax paid each year to the rich by the poor, nearly 
equal to the entire national debt. 1 One can imagine 
with what a cry of protest the country would receive 
the proposition to pay off the national debt in a single 
year, yet this would lay a burden of taxation on the 
people hardly greater than this annual tribute that we 
pay to a band of men in comparison with whom the 
pirates and condottieri of former ages were babes. 
This tribute is paid in the form of an enhanced price 
of every article of food or clothing or household use 
that the poor man buys. Is it any wonder that cost of 
living is so high, and need we search further for one 
of the great causes of social distress ? 

If one at first suspects Mr. Lawson of gross exag- 
geration, as soon as he begins to look at specific in- 
stances he makes discoveries in the light of which any 

1 The "World Almanac" gives the gross national debt, October 
1, 1913, as $2,342,926,174.66, and the net debt, after deducting 
cash in the Treasury, as $1,048,645,985.64. 



THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 309 

assertion seems credible. Here is a single case out of 
scores. In six years the capital of the New York, 
New Haven and Hartford railway was inflated by 
various feats of re-Morganization from $85,000,000 
to $350,000,000. It was such transactions as these, 
no doubt, that President Wilson had in mind when, 
in one of his campaign speeches, he said : "The bank- 
ing system of the country doesn't need to be indicted; 
it is convicted.' ' Involuntarily we have all been part- 
ners in this business — silent partners, who have re- 
ceived no share of the profits. Every dollar we have 
deposited in a bank has inevitably found its way to 
Wall Street, and has been a part of the resources of 
High Finance in its piratical enterprises. 

There has been much controversy of late over the 
question whether a Money Trust exists. The answer 
seems to depend chiefly on a definition. The term may 
be admitted to be a metaphor rather than a scientific 
description. Nobody who uses the phrase supposes 
that there is a charter and stockholders and directors, 
such as a trust implies. What people mean is that 
there is an actual controlling combination of the great 
financial interests. There is, in other words, "an es- 
tablished identity and community of interest between 
a few leaders of finance, which has been created and 
is held together through stockholdings, interlocking 
directorates, and other forms of domination over 
banks, trust companies, railroads, public service and 
industrial corporations, which has resulted in vast and 
growing concentration and control of money and 
credit in the hands of a comparatively few men." If 



3IO THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

such a condition exists, Money Trust is by no means a 
bad name for it. 

Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, in the Pujo investigation, 
denied that there was a Money Trust or that such a 
thing could possibly be under our legal and economic 
system. But specific testimony in the same investiga- 
tion showed that, by a system of interlocking direc- 
torates, about 1 80 men, directors and partners in eigh- 
teen firms, banks, and trust companies, actually con- 
trolled $25,000,000,000 of capital. Among these men 
three were acknowledged leaders. The total banking 
power of the United States was said by the Comptrol- 
ler of the Currency to be $23,000,000,000 in 191 3. 
This Wall Street group, which three men can swing 
as a unit, controls a money interest more than equal 
to all the banking capital, reserves, and banknotes in 
circulation. And yet men presumably intelligent ex- 
pect others who are reputed to be intelligent to believe 
them when they declare on honor, and sometimes on 
oath, that there is no Money Trust. 

Mr. George F. Baker, head of the First National 
Bank of New York, one of the greatest financial insti- 
tutions of the country, and himself one of the three 
Wall Street leaders, admitted that there is such con- 
trol of financial resources by a few men as is de- 
scribed above. Such control, he said, "might not be 
dangerous, but still it has gone about far enough. In 
good hands I do not say that it would do any harm. 
If it got into bad hands it would be very bad." By 
"good hands" Mr. Baker naturally means his own 
hands, the Morgan group. But to the people at large 



THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 3II 

it seems that any hands are "bad hands" to control 
so vast and irresponsible power as this. Nor can any 
man who really thinks be surprised that American so- 
ciety is seething with the spirit of revolution as these 
facts become understood by the masses who toil in 
hopeless bondage that the Morgans may pile up mil- 
lions. 

And the new banking law, enacted in 191 4, was so 
manipulated during its passage, with the full approval 
of President Wilson, that it has delivered over the 
financial resources of the nation more completely than 
ever to the "interests." When the organization of 
the regional banks has been completed, and the system 
is in full working order, people will comprehend how 
they have been betrayed by the men who were pre- 
tending to serve them. They will awaken to the fact 
that the Money Trust, instead of being curbed, has 
been given greatly increased powers. That, through 
its control of credit, it has every commercial enter- 
prise by the throat, and can compel it to obey or 
strangle it. When the people once understand what 
has been done, what they will do to the politicians 
who enacted this law will be something well worth 
witnessing. 

But even if these facts are true, and there is a 
Money Trust, it is said that nothing can be done about 
it. The conditions have come about as a natural de- 
velopment and cannot be altered by legislation — as 
well try to keep back the tides by statute as resist the 
sweep of economic events. "How can you unscramble 
eggs ?" asked Mr. Morgan on one occasion. When he 



312 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

said it, this was regarded as not only a good joke 
but unanswerable argument — by Big Business, and as 
something of a puzzler by others. But the house of 
Morgan has unscrambled one basket of eggs since his 
death by retiring from twenty-seven interlocking di- 
rectorates. It announced that it did this as a mere 
beginning, 1 and in deference to what it recognized as 
a strong public sentiment. The New York, New 
Haven and Hartford railway, which had been brought 
into virtual bankruptcy by the Morgan policies, has 
likewise found no difficulty in relinquishing its control 
of the Boston and Maine railway, the Eastern Steam- 
ship Company, and about a score of other corpora- 
tions larger or smaller. It has also been found pos- 
sible to undo the reorganization of the Rock Island 
system in 1902, by which $140,000,000 of "water" 
was injected into its stock. This was accomplished by 
the now familiar device of organizing a "holding com- 
pany/' a railway that existed on paper only. It is 
a simple matter to reverse the process and revive the 
original corporations and managements. Some eggs 
have been unscrambled; therefore all can be; such is 
the reasoning of people not obfuscated by the ideas 
and methods of High Finance. The reasoning may 
be hasty, the logic faulty, and the facts otherwise. 
But in this matter we are all citizens of Missouri ; we 
insist on being shown. 

How could such a state of things have come about 
in a "free" country? Because our country never has 
been really free. Because our conception of freedom 

1 The firm still held fifty directorates in forty-two companies. 



THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 313 

has been liberty of the individual to do anything in 
the realm of economics that he chose to do. We have 
limited freedom to matters within the scope of gov- 
ernment, to civic rights and privileges. Our indiffer- 
ence to economic freedom, until the shoe began to 
pinch our tender corns, has permitted economic an- 
archy, and this has brought about in a natural way 
union among exploiters and disorganization among 
the exploited. "The wolves hunt in packs, while the 
watchdogs snap at one another," says Professor Ross. 
And our present plight is also largely due to the fact 
that a great proportion of our Christian people are 
still wasting their time in little skirmishes with the 
lesser social evils, and never get into the big battle at 
all. They still, like their forebears, place personal 
righteousness above social welfare, and cannot see that 
the great sins of our day, the unforgivable sins, are 
social transgressions. 

IV 

New Zealand has given countries of older civiliza- 
tion a lesson in the possibility of decreasing exploita- 
tion, with the prospect of one day ending it altogether. 
It is a country with an area of 104,751 square miles — 
a little more than that of the Middle States — with a 
population of 1,108,468 (in 191 1), fewer by 100,000 
than Connecticut had in 19 10. A generation ago it 
seemed certain that the country would be divided into 
great landed estates. Large areas were bought up 
and held for speculative purposes. All the evils of 



314 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

the older civilization seemed about to be produced in 
an aggravated form. This process of land spoliation 
was checked in 1871 by a graduated tax, and in 1891 
by a compulsory purchase act. The government has 
retained and acquired land, until it controls the larger 
and better part, which is let on perpetual lease, with 
revaluation every twenty-one years. No one is to 
have over 320 acres. Under this policy the number of 
farms has doubled. 

In like manner the State has taken control of in- 
dustrial affairs. Compulsory arbitration was enacted 
in 1894, in a broad statute that applied to all register- 
ing associations of workers or employers. Strikes and 
lockouts are prohibited : in case of a dispute arising, a 
local board of conciliation may be called by either 
party to undertake a settlement. If this board fails, 
the case is tried by an arbitration court, consisting of 
two members chosen by the workers, two by registered 
associations of employers, and one supreme court 
judge appointed by the government. Disobedience of 
the decision of this court is punishable as contempt. 
Varying accounts are given of the operation of this 
system, because those who have written about it have 
found in it what they looked for; it cannot be said 
to have had dispassionate, scientific study. It seems 
clear, however, that it is better than the former system 
of industrial war. Naturally, it has failed to give 
complete satisfaction to either employers or employees, 
but, as most strikes and lockouts end in a compromise, 
compulsory arbitration on the whole may be said to 
work fairly. That neither party is satisfied with a 



THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 315 

decision in a labor controversy, so far from proving 
the decision to be unjust, is presumptive evidence of 
its substantial justice; for experience shows that each 
party demands more than is just. 

In other social experiments New Zealand has also 
led the way. It has had a system of old-age pensions 
for fourteen years ; it has had seventeen years of wom- 
an suffrage. Voters of both sexes must use their 
right of suffrage or lose it. Government loans are 
made to settlers and farmers at low rate of interest; 
government savings banks and government life in- 
surance at cost have been provided. Of course, the 
State has taken ownership of all natural monopolies : 
coal mines, railways, telegraphs, and telephones. In- 
cidentally it may be remarked that a telephone costs 
$15 a year or less, and that more telegraph messages 
per capita are transmitted in New Zealand than in any 
country in the world — the reason being that the cheap- 
ness, celerity, and secrecy of the service are nowhere 
else equaled. 

But New Zealand is only on the way toward aboli- 
tion of exploitation : the goal is yet hardly in sight. 
This is because the wage system is still retained as 
the basis of industrialism. Wages and exploitation 
are inseparable. Wages can never rise so high as to 
abolish exploitation, because the moment wages reach 
a point where no profit remains to the capitalist, it is 
for his interest to give up his business rather than con- 
tinue it. He may temporarily continue without profit, 
and even at a loss, but it must be with a rational hope 
of recouping his losses by future profits. Wages can 



3l6 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

never equal the value of the product of labor under 
capitalism ; on the contrary, they must be much lower 
as a rule, because of the deductions necessary under 
the present system. The margin between product of 
labor and payment of wages must not only cover the 
net profits of the employer, but many other things 
that are usually charged to cost of production. It 
covers, for instance, rent, interest on loans, salaries, 
advertising, taxes. All these have to be subtracted 
from surplus value, that is, the excess of value of 
product over wages of the workers. It is clear that' 
wages cannot rise high enough to be even approxi- 
mately equal to value of product. The capitalistic sys- 
tem means under all possible circumstances exploita- 
tion of wage-workers. It is impossible to abolish this 
exploitation without abolishing the system itself. It 
is impossible greatly to lessen the exploitation, which 
does not rest on the will of the employer, but on the 
industrial system. 

The indirect social effects of many of these items 
in the account of exploitation are quite as important 
as their direct economic significance. For instance, the 
great place that advertising has come to take in the 
system has had an effect on the press that nobody 
could have anticipated a generation ago. Newspapers 
and magazines have come under the domination of 
capitalism by a necessary process, and, as a result, 
have become means of spreading ignorance rather 
than intelligence. Between their suppression of un- 
welcome truth and their perversion of fact they would 
be an even more serious menace to popular welfare 



THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 317 

than they are, if the people were not generally aware 
of their habitual untruthfulness. A single newspaper 
in New York receives from a large department store 
the sum of $300,000 a year for advertising. Would it 
be possible to procure the publication in that news- 
paper of any matter disagreeable to the management 
of that department store? Only a remarkably credu- 
lous person would believe that such a thing could be 
done. Advertisers may be guilty of disgraceful 
crimes, they may be prosecuted by the government for 
customs frauds, and no whisper of the facts will be 
permitted to reach the public through the newspapers 
that they subsidize. The slimy trail of capitalism is 
over every social institution. 



kVi 



The complaint against the ancient Jeshurun was 
that he waxed fat and kicked ; the modern Jeshurun is 
too fat to kick, but he is suffering from the same dis- 
ease, an overdose of prosperity. The Christian re- 
ligion is being smothered in comfort, and, because of 
its decline, America is fast going the way of the great 
Roman empire, in which the cynical and inhuman ex- 
ploitation of other classes by the aristocracy finally de- 
pleted the resources of the Mediterranean nations, to 
the degree that made them an easy prey to the Teu- 
ton. Still exploitation continues among us, exploita- 
tion of those already poor, for the enrichment of those 
already rich. It is still true that to him that hath 



318 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

shall be given and he shall have abundance, while 
from him that hath not even that which he hath shall 
be taken away. Will the people who profess to believe 
the Gospel of Jesus continue to let this go on without 
protest, without seeking a remedy? 

A remedy ? The exploiter is prompt with his reply : 
There is no remedy; we need no remedy; the natural 
laws of society may be trusted in the long run to 
give every man all that is justly his. If we meddle 
with those laws we are more likely to do harm than 
good. Shall we accept this as sufficient? Then let 
us bow down before the god of Things As They Are 
and do all in our power to keep them so. Let every- 
thing, even the law, perish rather than make any 
change in the industrial system. In words that are 
now classic, "What's a little thing like the Constitu- 
tion between friends?" Sternly repress every symp- 
tom of dissatisfaction among the workers. If the 
laborer troubles you, and particularly if he has the 
impudence to strike, have a policeman smash him 
over the head and then put him in jail. If the regu- 
lar policeman is not "on the job," hire some thugs to 
do his work for him. Let us go further and restore 
the good old English law of pious young Edward VI, 
of fragrant Protestant memory, and, if any man re- 
fuses longer to work at the same wages that formerly 
satisfied him, brand him in the forehead with the 
letter F (which they say stood for Falsity). If treat- 
ment of these effective sorts had been administered to 
the strikers at Lawrence and Little Falls and Pater- 
son (to all is, of course, meant; it was given to some 



THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 319 

without much effect), they would have been "taught 
their place" and would have gone meekly back to 
work for what their employers chose to give them. 
We lack the courage to apply such measures ruth- 
lessly, but we are visibly improving every year, and 
we shall become quite perfect in time. So screw down 
the safety-valve; pile on the coal; make Big Business 
hum! And by and by, when we all go skyward to- 
gether, we can spend the abundant leisure of eternity 
in wondering how it happened. 

But there is another answer heard, the answer to 
which our discussion has led by an inexorable logic : 
destroy exploitation. Make the wage system impos- 
sible. Transform capitalism into cooperative produc- 
tion. Make workers once more owners of the means 
of production, so that they may be certain of receiv- 
ing the full product of their labor — less the small de- 
duction that must always be made for the good of 
society. Death and taxes will continue to be the great 
certainties of this world so long as men live. The 
product is already large enough for the needs of all; 
it is capable of indefinite increase; and there are 
wastes that we might eliminate and thus double the 
present available wealth. There is no reason why 
poverty should continue. 

As to the details of this change, by precisely what 
steps we shall proceed and what form of industrial 
and social organization will result, there is much 
theorizing but no knowledge. A learned and wise 
friend used to say that he liked to hear people proph- 
esy, for then he at least knew what would not take 



320 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

place. Society and industrialism were not made to 
order to fit theories, and they will not be remade to 
fit theories. They grew into their present forms and 
they will grow into new forms. All speculation about 
the future is worse than wasted time and energy. 
What we need to bend every energy toward is imme- 
diate improvement of present conditions of living. 
The first steps are plain enough. It will aid to abolish 
exploitation if we, first of all, decide upon common 
ownership of common natural resources : including, at 
the very least, the forests, mines, and water power. 
It will be a second step if we conclude to assert com- 
mon ownership of all means of transportation, as we 
have already of roads and waterways. This will make 
all railways and canals and steamship lines and the air- 
ships of the future public property, to be operated at 
public cost and public profit. It will be a further step 
if we resolve to make all means of communication 
public property, as we now do the post. This will 
mean common ownership of telegraphs, telephones, 
ocean cables, wireless systems. 

The doing of these things promises to keep us busy 
for some years to come, and they would be just a neat 
beginning. The next step would be common owner- 
ship of the great industrial enterprises. We shall have 
government control of these within a decade, and 
from that to government ownership would be no long 
step. It may even be taken before some of the others ; 
for this is an attempt to show logical methods of 
procedure, not the actual chronology, which may be 
quite different. When the Steel Trust and the Oil 



THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 32 1 

Trust and the Sugar Trust and the Woolen Trust and 
the Whiskey Trust and a few others have been taken 
over by the government and are operated for the 
public good instead of private profit, we shall have 
proceeded far enough on the road toward cooperative 
production and the elimination of exploitation to know 
just what to do next. 1 Nobody now living need be 
ashamed to confess that he does not know. If any- 
body says otherwise he is either self-deceived or a 
deceiver. 



VI 



But may not profit-sharing be a solution of the in- 
dustrial problem? Fresh attention has been directed 
to this solution by the proposal of the head of the 
Ford Automobile Company to distribute $10,000,000 
of profits among the workers during the year 1914. 
Mr. Ford has been a workingman, and, now that he is 
a capitalist, he has still some bowels of compassion 
for the class from which he rose. He knows that men 
who work for wages do not desire charity or philan- 
thropy, but justice; and he professes it as his belief 

1 Besides the industrial changes, certain fiscal reforms would 
go far to lessen exploitation, by turning some of its accumula- 
tions into the common fund : a progressive land tax, gradually 
increased until the full rental value is taken; a graduated in- 
come tax, increasing rapidly for all incomes over $100,000; a 
graduated inheritance tax, on the same principle. These three 
sources of revenue would be ample for all public purposes, and 
leave the entire product of labor to be enjoyed by the producers. 



322 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

that this is a measure of justice — the workers have 
earned this $10,000,000 and it equitably belongs to 
them. The men will henceforth work in three eight- 
hour shifts, so that a larger number than before will 
be employed. The minimum wage paid will be $5 a 
day, and some workers will receive more than twice 
that. Earnings varying from $1,599 to $3>°°° a vear 
in this factory will contrast remarkably with the less 
than $500, which is said to be the average annual earn- 
ings of workers. 

The comments and discussion on Mr. Ford's pro- 
posal may be classified under two heads : objections on 
the part of capitalists and their defenders that Mr. 
Ford's undertaking is unwise and that he has prom- 
ised too much; objections on the part of workers and 
their friends that Mr. Ford's offer, generous as it is, 
promises too little. 

The head of a large rolling mill makes a typical 
spokesman of the former class. 1 He is much afraid 
that the Ford enterprise will be misunderstood and 
do great harm, by arousing hopes impossible of ful- 
filment and making labor organizations more unrea- 
sonable in their demands. He argues that the Ford 
Company has conducted so exceptional a business, and 
has enjoyed profits so extraordinary, that it has no 
parallel among American industries. Few concerns 
can pay six per cent, on their capital. "We must, 
therefore, understand that this is a magic proposition 

1 George M. Verity, president of the American Rolling Mill 
Company, Middletown, Ohio, in the "Outlook" of March 21, 
1914. 



THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 323 

that cannot be duplicated once in ten thousand times, 
if at all." 

It is, indeed, improbable that the proposition will 
be duplicated, but not for the reason given. Why is 
the business of the Ford Company so exceptional ? It 
is well known that as keen competition exists in the 
automobile industry as in any other form of manu- 
facture. These profits do not represent any monopoly 
or unfair advantage, resulting from natural resources 
controlled or from undue favoritism on the part of 
railroads. Has there been a moment, from their be- 
ginning until now, when the oil and steel industries 
could say as much? The capitalists will have to try 
again — that argument will convince nobody. It is well 
known that enormous dividends have been earned and 
declared (though sometimes partially concealed by 
bonuses of stock or bonds) by many great industrial 
and commercial enterprises. 

It is quite right, however, to say that the Ford Com- 
pany is exceptional; in one respect it is absolutely 
unique. It was incorporated with $2,000,000 capital 
stock, actual cash investment. Last year it paid profits 
of $29,000,000 (another statement says $25,000,000, 
but we need not bother about a trifling discrepancy of 
$4,000,000). Now it is an accepted principle of High 
Finance that a going concern should be capitalized, 
not on the actual investment, but on earning capacity. 
And so, if Mr. Ford had been a great financier, and 
not a mere manufacturer with a sense of justice, he 
would have proceeded promptly to capitalize his com- 
pany on this basis of earnings, in which case he could 



324 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

have issued from $400,000,000 to $500,000,000 of ad- 
ditional stock, on which a dividend of four to six per 
cent, could be paid out of earnings. At one stroke 
he might thus have put himself in the Rockefeller- 
Carnegie class and made the second-rate fortunes of 
such as the Morgans look like the proverbial thirty 
cents. He could thenceforth have done as other finan- 
cier-manufacturers do — he could have resisted every 
demand of his employees for better wages, on the 
ground that if wages were raised dividends could not 
be paid to stockholders. And he could have pulled out 
the tremolo stop and talked about those poor widows 
and orphans. But he did none of these things. Mr. 
Ford has proved himself to be a good manufacturer, 
and some are like to think him a good man, but no- 
body will ever accuse him of being a good financier. 
He missed the Great Opportunity Of His Life. 

The real reason why this is a "magic proposition 
that cannot be duplicated once in ten thousand times" 
is, not that there are not hundreds of concerns quite 
as "exceptional" as the Ford Company, but because, 
among all of our captains of industry, there is thus far 
only one Ford — but this one man who has been able to 
resist the temptation to make a quick fortune through 
dishonest capitalization; only one man who, having 
risen from the ranks of the workers, has had the grace 
to remember the pit whence he was digged. The rest 
have forgotten their origin as quickly as possible and 
have gone to live on Fifth Avenue and marry their 
daughter to a duke. When we recall the early lives 
of nearly all our American millionaires, and behold 



THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 325 

their unsympathetic attitude toward the toilers, they 
become at once difficult to comprehend and impossible 
to forgive. There is no reason whatever, save greed 
and flint-hearted selfishness, why similar profit-shar- 
ing could not be adopted in scores of our larger indus- 
tries, and still leave fair profits on the actual invest- 
ment. The obstacles are not industrial, but human 
and "financial." 

The second class of objections are in part captious 
and ungrateful, and in part theoretic. To the theoretic 
objections it should be obvious to reply that Mr. Ford 
has not undertaken to remake the whole social order 
and establish his business on an ideal basis. He has 
only undertaken the practical problem of managing 
a single business in accord with his own sense of jus- 
tice and to promote the welfare of his own employees. 
There are soap-box orators on every corner who will 
undertake to settle the affairs of the whole world on 
five minutes' notice. Let us not be ungrateful to the 
one man who has shown some insight and some hu- 
man feeling in trying to solve his own personal prob- 
lem. 

At the same time it is proper to recognize that real 
criticism of Mr. Ford's experiment has been and will 
be directed at this point : granting its personal gener- 
osity, and conceding the doubtful point that it is likely 
to be followed on a considerable scale, the net result of 
profit-sharing can only be to prolong the life of the 
present industrial system. It retains the wage system 
and exploitation, while it considerably reduces the 
evils of exploitation in those industries where it ob- 



326 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

tains. If profit-sharing of this kind became at all gen- 
eral in the large industries, it would tend to make the 
fortunate workers who received its benefits callous to 
the ills under which the larger part of the workers 
would still groan. It would build up a little aristoc- 
racy of workers who would form a class by them- 
selves, and so far weaken the solidarity that labor is 
now slowly gaining. Workmen who enjoyed incomes 
of $1,500 to $3,000 a year might well be so content 
with their own lot as to take little interest in improv- 
ing the lot of others. But, as there is little prospect 
that the Ford experiment will be imitated, the hope 
of the workers will be strengthened to demand a more 
radical measure of industrial reform and social re- 
adjustment. 

Some of our Churches and ministers shrink from 
all radical measures. They are not attempting any- 
thing for the real solution of the problem of poverty, 
or of any other social problem, but are occupying 
themselves with what they call social service. They 
wonder that they accomplish so little, but they are 
really doing all that a puling, piddling thing can be 
expected to accomplish. What goes under the name 
of social service is as valuable as most milk-and-water 
reforms. It is a house of refuge for people whose 
consciences are troubled about existing conditions, but 
who lack intelligence or courage to recognize and ap- 
ply the cure. Until all things that men need in com- 
mon and use in common shall be owned in common ; 
until all men work at some productive labor and en- 



THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 2> 2 7 

joy the fruits of their labor; we shall have poverty 
and crime and vice and disease. 

But you are promoting class feeling, objects some 
horrified reader, and how do you reconcile that with 
the Gospel of Jesus? It really seems to me that, so 
long as one class robs another, one may try to rouse 
the robbed to struggle against the robber and over- 
come him, without any impairment of the message of 
Jesus. But let us remember always that the class con- 
sciousness of the worker is feeble as compared to the 
class consciousness of exploiters and dividend-hunt- 
ers. The worker is slowly becoming conscious that 
he has been robbed, that he is oppressed and denied 
justice; but the exploiting class has long been held 
together as a unit by the cohesive force of plunder. 
The remedy for class feeling, if any really deplore 
it, is to stop the robbery of one class by another and 
see to it that justice is done. This will not be atone- 
ment for the past, but it will be some security for the 
future. The descendants of the men who spilled the 
tea into Boston harbor and gathered on the green at 
Lexington will never tamely submit to injustice. They 
will seek redress, by peaceable means if possible, by 
violent means if they must, but submit — never! 

The great bulk of the working class have proved 
themselves exceedingly slow in the acquirement of 
class consciousness, and still slower in ability to com- 
bine in common action. They have proved over and 
over again that they cannot get the most elementary 
ideas about their own welfare into their heads without 
a surgical operation. But to be clubbed over the head 



328 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

by a brutal policeman, or one of the thugs called spe- 
cial officers that are so great favorites in these days 
with the employing class, is a very good substitute for 
surgical operations. It has knocked into many a head 
the idea that the interests of capital and labor are 
opposed and irreconcilable, instead of identical, as it 
has been the fashion of economists to assert. This is 
no new experience, however; all social reforms have 
to be carried against the determined opposition of 
those who are most to benefit from them. The aver- 
age worker would as soon vote against his own in- 
terests as eat, and would rather die than think. 

The workers organized into trades unions and rep- 
resented by the American Federation of Labor pro- 
claim in no uncertain terms that they have no quarrel 
with the present system of exploitation, no desire to 
do away with the legalized robbery of the weak by the 
strong called profit. No, what they demand is merely 
a larger share of the swag. Their past and present 
portion of the plunder is too small to please them; 
give them a greater percentage and the plundering 
may go on forever, for them. Admirable ethics ! 

The objection to class feeling, however, grows out 
of entire misapprehension of its origin and nature. 
A few words ought to make this much beclouded mat- 
ter clear. By far the largest part of the activities of 
any society, and of all its individual members, are 
concerned with the production and distribution of the 
necessaries of life : the majority of mankind are never 
emancipated from the daily struggle to procure food, 
clothing and shelter. These are determining factors 



THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 329 

of life. The psychological processes of men are 
mainly controlled by this physical necessity. Every 
man's mental state, what we call his stock of ideas, 
is the product of the constantly repeated experiences 
of this struggle for existence, and the sense percep- 
tions that come to him during the struggle. Class dis- 
tinctions, class psychology, and, therefore, class con- 
sciousness become possible, nay inescapable, the mo- 
ment the original conditions of life become modified 
through common effort — whenever the accumulated 
wealth of the community makes it possible for the 
stronger, physically and mentally, to exploit the 
weaker. Class feeling is the result of exploitation, and 
the only way to eradicate it from society is to elimi- 
nate exploitation. 

To abolish poverty has been declared by the Fed- 
eration of Christian Churches to be the goal of Chris- 
tian effort. It may well be doubted if those who 
framed this declaration, or those who have welcomed 
it, have any real apprehension of its meaning. But 
at all events, the Churches have undertaken a man's 
job, one that may well enlist all the energies and rouse 
all the enthusiasm of Christians. It is a goal that their 
Master would have heartily approved. It is making 
the Gospel of Jesus mean something to an unbelieving 
and justly incredulous world. For the Church has 
hitherto been playing with the problem, not seriously 
trying to solve it. The Church has been too long con- 
tent to enact the Good Samaritan, to pour oil and wine 
on the wounds made by brigands, but it is now sum- 
moned to clean up the road to Jericho and put down 



330 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

brigandage. The Church still gives quinine and can- 
not be induced to undertake the drainage of the 
swamps. "Millions for charity, but not a cent for jus- 
tice" has been well said to be her motto. 

And we cannot wonder. The Church has always 
been in an alliance, more or less unconscious, with 
the powers that prey. The exploiter and the priest 
have been twin brothers; capitalism and the Church 
are to-day twin forces. How long? "Issachar is a 
strong ass, couching between two burdens" is a text 
that might have been taken to describe the laborer of 
a former generation ; but the laborer of to-day is tired 
of his burdens and he no longer couches. He has risen; 
he has shaken himself; he is beginning to feel his 
strength, though as yet he has used it with all the in- 
telligence of the ass. But he is learning. And the 
time is approaching, it may be almost here, when, if 
the wrongs of society are not set right by those who 
have caused them and those who have profited by 
them, they will be set right by those who have suf- 
fered from them. Woe worth the day! By terrible 
things in righteousness will God answer us, if we delay 
to do justice. 

The Church will ere long have to make its ultimate 
choice between exploiters and exploited, between those 
who do and those who suffer wrong, between those 
who try to do justice and those who make justice a 
mockery. Some say the Church has already chosen, 
and chosen the side of the oppressor. There are facts 
that point that way, sinister facts, deplorable facts. 
But one cannot believe that organized Christianity has 



THE PROBLEM OF POVERTY 33 1 

deliberately made up its mind to turn the back on the 
teachings of the Nazarene. One cannot believe that 
it has committed the great apostacy and denied the 
Gospel of Jesus — yet. But the final choice cannot be 
long postponed. The Church cannot serve God and 
Mammon, and already the voice comes, "Choose ye 
this day whom ye will serve." The day has passed 
when the clergy can dine with the rich and preach 
at the poor. A be-content-with-your-lot religion and 
a beyond-the-stars Heaven can no longer be used as a 
soothing syrup to silence the cries of the oppressed. 
Some of these words will be thought irreverent by 
some readers, but reverence for reality is more relig- 
ious than reverence for the past. Those Christians 
who hope to resist the sweep of the world toward 
righteousness by accusations of "heresy" and thun- 
dering anathemas are as wise as those Boxers who 
withstood modern artillery by beating gongs. When 
the first railway trains ran across the Western plains 
the Indians thought to lasso the locomotive and pull 
it from the track. The result was disastrous — for 
the Indians. But lassoing a locomotive is a wholly 
practicable thing compared to stopping the drift of so- 
ciety toward universal justice, peace, and prosperity. 
Upon the wall of any Church that opposes triumphant 
democracy may already be seen the tekel, upharsin. 



CHAPTER X 



THE PROBLEM OF "LAWLESSNESS" 



We hear much about the "lawlessness" of the 
American people ; much in the way of outcry and de- 
nunciation, little in the way of analysis and search 
for cause and remedy. Few pause in their denuncia- 
tions to inquire, Is this lawlessness a symptom of 
disease or an evidence of health? Let us lay aside 
our reverence for venerable phrases and seek for 
truth. What is "law and order"? Why should we 
respect it ? Nothing can be long respected unless it is 
respectable; and the question therefore assumes this 
form : Is the system that we call law and order worthy 
of respect? 

To answer this, we must examine the system. Law 
and order is the body of rules and regulations designed 
to protect and preserve existing social arrangements. 
Sociology establishes the principle that government 
and laws will always represent the interests strong 
enough to control. When organization of the social 
group takes the form of a landed aristocracy, govern- 
ment will embody in legislation and enforce with all 
its civil and military powers ethical ideas peculiar to 
a landed aristocracy. This is why in England crimes 
against property have for ages been punished with 
more severity than crimes against the person, murder 

332 



THE PROBLEM OF "LAWLESSNESS" 333 

alone excepted. The laws against poaching are an 
excellent illustration of the influence of aristocratic 
ethics on law. 

In all civilized lands to-day the dominant social 
order is capitalistic; the old aristocracy and the new 
industrial princes have joined forces; money rules 
the world. Law and order is, therefore, a system de- 
signed to protect and preserve capitalism. Any system 
must be judged by its purpose. Law and order, then, 
must be held to be as respectable as capitalism, and no 
more so. The controlling interests secure the election 
of lawmakers who will do their bidding. If that is 
not representative government, what would be? The 
lawmakers represent those who really elect them, not 
those who meekly vote for them. 

Defenders of the present system will attempt in 
vain, therefore, to invest law and order with any sac- 
rosanct character. It is like the source from which 
it sprang, tainted with injustice and unethical princi- 
ples in every part. It is worthy of respect only as a 
barrier against social chaos. Most of us approve 
law and order, merely because we are not anarchists. 
For a long time to come the meek and unselfish and 
weak will need protection against the strong and self- 
ish and brutal. But that protection should be com- 
posed of a maximum of justice and a minimum of 
force, whereas, as our closer examination will show 
us, existing law and order may be not unfairly de- 
scribed as a minimum of justice and a maximum of 
force. 

To be sure, law has always professed as its end the 



334 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

securing of justice between man and man. But in 
practice, law is of necessity the expression of the ideas 
of justice entertained by the ruling class. One man 
cannot be trusted to be just in his conduct toward 
others, else there would be no need of law; no more 
can one class be trusted to be just to another class. 
But law is the way in which the capitalistic class 
thinks other classes ought to conduct themselves, and 
how capitalists should treat other classes. Order is 
the compulsion of the other classes by the capitalistic 
class to accept this definition of conduct and rights. 
Order means that the policeman with his club, and the 
soldier with rifle and bayonet and cannon, will com- 
pel the other classes to do what the capitalistic class 
thinks they ought to do. When analyzed to the bot- 
tom, do law and order mean anything else than 
this? Capital says to labor: Be law-abiding: we 
make, interpret, and administer the law. Can such a 
system, in the nature of things, be any close approxi- 
mation to justice? And if not, is it respectable? 

Again, law professes to have as its end the greatest 
good of the greatest number. It is a fine-sounding 
maxim that has deceived generations. Because every 
ruling class, in making the law, interprets this maxim 
to mean that the greatest number is Number One. In 
other words, the ruling class looks out for its own 
interests first of all. Only when it believes these to be 
secured does it turn its attention to the interests of 
others, and it never really cares much for any inter- 
ests save its own. Its benevolence and philanthropy 
are languid, spasmodic and lukewarm; its selfishness 



THE PROBLEM OF LAWLESSNESS 335 

is active, continuous and powerful. The capitalistic 
ideal of law and order is the creation and maintenance, 
by statutes, courts, and physical force, of those condi- 
tions under which exploitation of the worker can be 
conducted without interference or interruption. Any 
who presume to interfere or interrupt are to be sup- 
pressed with neatness and dispatch. 



The whole legal system of the United States is 
therefore established on an indefensible basis, is funda- 
mentally unjust and certain to be defective in detail. 
To illustrate this adequately would require a large 
volume, and in the pages here available only a few 
instances can be given. 

Two great classes of abuses should be carefully con- 
sidered by any who would comprehend the nature and 
social effects of the present system. The first of these 
is procedure by injunction, together with its supple- 
ment : the power of the court to punish for contempt. 
Workers are justified in maintaining that this branch 
of the law is generally used for their oppression. The 
injunction has been used by courts with utmost reck- 
lessness of constitutional and statute rights of work- 
ers, with respect for nothing but wishes of employers. 
In the great steel strike workers were enjoined "from 
peaceably discussing the merits of their claim with the 
men that were at work, even though the latter might 
raise no objection. ,, In a similar case peaceful picket- 



336 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

ing was declared illegal by English courts, and Parlia- 
ment promptly passed a statute making it legal. But 
Congress and legislatures have done nothing for the 
relief of American workingmen. Why? In the case 
of the Sun Printing Company the Supreme Court of 
New York in 1899 enjoined the striking printers from 
giving their side of the controversy to the public, 
while the Sun was free to print whatever it chose. 
In 1900 the Cigarmakers International Union were en- 
joined from approaching their former employers, even 
for the purpose of securing an amicable settlement; 
and from paying money to the strikers to support 
their families during the strike. Could tyranny go 
further in Russia? What becomes of our constitu- 
tional guarantees of personal liberty and freedom of 
speech under such decisions? 

And if such tyrannical interference of the courts 
is disobeyed the courts claim and exercise the right to 
punish the disobedience as contempt, inflicting fines 
and imprisonments at their pleasure. Thus the citizen 
is deprived of his constitutional right of trial by jury, 
and a judicial despotism is created that would be in- 
tolerable in any country, but is peculiarly intolerable 
when it is found to exist only in a country that pro- 
fesses to secure to every man his inalienable right to 
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 

The plea on which such injunctions are justified is 
that they are necessary to protect property rights, so 
endangered that a less summary method might result 
in irreparable loss. The injunction is granted on an 
ex parte affidavit which recites facts that are alleged 



THE PROBLEM OF "LAWLESSNESS" 237 

to justify action. But the court never takes into ac- 
count this : that, if the facts recited in the affidavit do 
not exist, or if other facts not cited would wholly 
alter the complexion of the case, an irreparable hurt 
may be done to the party against whom the injunction 
is issued. This is precisely what usually happens. For 
the affidavits are always partisan, and not infrequently 
stuffed with perjury; their object is merely to deceive 
the court, which nevertheless could not be deceived 
were it not a willing party tc the deception. The ob- 
ject for which the injunction is issued in a labor con- 
troversy, as every citizen knows but the judge, is not 
to protect property or rights of person, but to defeat 
the strike. The injunction happens to be the most 
powerful weapon that the law just now puts into the 
hand of the capitalist, and courts devoted to his inter- 
ests obligingly hand out this weapon to him whenever 
he demands it. 

All have read about the tyranny of Charles I and 
the revolution that it provoked in England. But to 
how many readers has it occurred that an exactly 
similar tyranny is in process of establishment in our 
own country? Let us remind ourselves of the judicial 
machinery by which the Stuart tyranny was upheld 
and exercised — the courts of the Star Chamber and 
High Commission — how by ingenious construction of 
Acts of Parliament and gradually stretching their pre- 
rogatives these courts finally threatened to make a new 
system of law by judicial decision, to overthrow the 
ancient laws of England and so deprive Englishmen 
of the right secured to them by Magna Charta, that 



338 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

no man should be deprived of liberty or property save 
by verdict of a jury of his peers. Under the rule of 
Laud and Strafford, the chief ministers of Charles, 
Englishmen were tried without jury, denied privilege 
of counsel, refused subpoena of witnesses; and these 
courts proceeded by summary action against alleged 
offenders and inflicted on them every penalty except 
death. 

This is the exact process in which our courts are 
engaged to-day, and they have already gone far to 
parallel the most high-handed outrages of the Star 
Chamber and High Commission. Under pretext of 
protecting endangered property rights, they violate 
fundamental human rights, issuing injunctions that 
forbid such free speech and action as Englishmen and 
Americans have enjoyed from time immemorial; and 
then, under further pretext of preserving their own 
dignity and authority, they punish disobedience to 
their commands by fine and imprisonment at their 
pleasure, without trial by jury. In time to come, 
Samuel Gompers and John Mitchell will be lauded as 
patriots like John Hampden for courageously resist- 
ing such judicial tyranny, while the judges who prac- 
tice it will stand in the pillory of history alongside 
of Laud and Strafford and the judges who upheld 
the legality of ship-money. The parallel may yet go 
further: Laud and Strafford and their royal master 
lost their heads in the revolution they provoked. 

Preachers of the Gospel of Jesus should clear their 
minds of cant, and no longer exhort men to respect 
that which is not respectable, no longer call justice 



THE PROBLEM OF "LAWLESSNESS" 339 

that which is the essence of tyranny, no longer praise 
conduct that is criminal. For there is no form of 
criminality so deeply heinous, so deadly in its social 
consequences as that of the judge whose function is 
to administer justice, but who sets himself deliberately 
to administer injustice. How would it do for the 
clergy to preach a few sermons on such texts as 
"Cursed be he that perverteth the judgment of the 
stranger, fatherless, and widow, and all the people 
shall say, Amen" ? * 

This judicial tyranny is the more remarkable in a 
"free" country, because it is a relic of absolute mon- 
archy. In ancient theory, the king was the fountain 
of all justice and judges were but his deputies. An 
insult offered them was an insult to the king; dis- 
obedience to their mandates was equivalent to trea- 
son. Punishment for contempt was inflicted for of- 
fenses committed in the presence of the court. Later 
courts of equity assumed the same character and pow- 
ers. In their present form contempt proceedings are 
of recent origin, though based on this ancient prece- 
dent. The injunction was also until recently granted 
sparingly, and only in real emergencies. The great 
extension of these powers, assumed from the first by 
courts without authority of law, and stretched to the 
breaking point and beyond within the last few decades, 
recalls to mind that such powers never were conferred 
on courts by the people, through any constitution or 
statute. Now that these usurped powers are con- 
stantly and notoriously abused, inquiry into their f oun- 

x Deut. 27:19. 



340 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

dation becomes necessary and inevitable. And such in- 
quiry makes it plain to the layman, however the law- 
yer may deceive himself, that the judge is himself a 
lawbreaker whenever he punishes any man for any of- 
fense (except perhaps flagrant misbehavior in the 
court room) without trial by jury and a verdict of 
guilt. The law under which the judge acts is a law 
made by judges, and never sanctioned by the people, 
save by their silence — a silence of ignorance. 

What is called "law and order" too often means, 
therefore, simply the lawlessness of judges. The law- 
lessness of a judge is no more respectable than the 
lawlessness of a mob — indeed, it is less respectable. 
The mob nearly always has the purpose to execute 
what we commonly call justice, and it often does ex- 
ecute "justice," in an irregular and unlawful manner 
doing what judge and jury and sheriff might and 
should do in the premises. The danger of mob-law is 
that the mob is peculiarly liable to be wrong as to 
the fact, and so to punish an innocent person. A 
judge is certain to be more accurately informed as to 
the fact, but the danger of judge-law is that the judge 
often has no intention to do justice, or entirely mis- 
understands what justice is. Now, if we were com- 
pelled to choose between the two forms of lawlessness : 
the mob, intending justice, but liable to be wrong as 
to fact, and the judge, right as to fact but intending 
injustice, many considerations might lead us to say: 
Give us mob-law rather than judge-law. But we are 
not yet compelled to make this choice. An old maxim 
says, Of two evils choose the less; but a better rule 



THE PROBLEM OF "LAWLESSNESS" 34I 

is, Of two evils choose neither. We can reform our 
judicial system and take from judges the power to 
make law. We can and must see to it that the power 
of courts to grant injunctions is very strictly limited, 
and that their power to punish for contempt, other 
than misbehavior in court, is wholly abolished. Any 
man who is accused of disobeying the mandate of a 
court should be indicted and tried by a jury in another 
court, as for any other crime. When a judge proceeds 
summarily for alleged contempt, he violates the funda- 
mental maxim of equity that forbids a judge to sit in a 
case in which he is personally interested. Judges have 
proved to a demonstration that they cannot be trusted 
with either of these powers, and that their present use 
of them is incompatible with the institutions of a free 
country. 

These are the views of a layman in the law, but 
they have the support of the best professional au- 
thority. In an address delivered in New York, in 
January, 19 14, Chief Justice Walter Clark, of the 
North Carolina Supreme Court, said that all the pow- 
ers of government, both Federal and State, lie at the 
feet of a judicial oligarchy. "The overwhelming pre- 
ponderance of the judiciary," he declared, is "without 
a line in the constitution to authorize it." We may 
fairly set this against the amazing pronouncement of 
the Supreme Court of Idaho that "the inherent power 
of the court to punish for contempt cannot be inter- 
fered with or abridged by the legislature." We shall 
see what the people will do to this doctrine of "in- 
herent power" of the courts they have created to ad- 



342 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

minister justice, how they will treat this new notion 
of judicial divine right. Americans are still fully per- 
suaded that, if there is any "divine right" that will 
bear inspection, it is the right of the people to rule 
themselves, not to be ruled by kings, legislators, or 
judges. 

Only a decade ago it was still the general belief that 
our courts were the one institution left us that was 
worthy of entire respect, untouched by corruption, ad- 
ministering justice with even hand to poor and rich 
alike. Our political education has proceeded so rapidly 
that almost our last vestige of respect for our courts 
has vanished. We see our judges as they are: the 
poor creatures of the predatory corporations and the 
venal bosses. Even those among them who are tech- 
nically "honest" are constitutionally and professionally 
disposed to favor wealth and privilege against man- 
hood and equal rights. And when they are disposed 
to do justice they are so bound hand and foot by 
precedents and rules of procedure that they are utterly 
unable to see the real equity of a case. 1 



II 



The second great abuse in the present system of 
"law and order" is the power usurped by the courts of 

1 President Taf t said, in a now famous speech, "I love courts ; 
I love judges. They are my ideals on earth that typify what we 
shall meet in heaven under a just God." We may or may not 
hope to meet Mr. Taft in such a heaven as he conceives, but 
some of us hope one day to appear before a very different God. 



THE PROBLEM OF "LAWLESSNESS" 343 

declaring statutes unconstitutional. Let Chief Justice 
Clark be heard again: "The overwhelming prepon- 
derance of the judiciary was unexpectedly created in 
1803 by a decision of the Supreme Court of the United 
States, without a line of the Constitution to authorize 
it, when that body assumed the right to veto any act 
of Congress it chose to hold unconstitutional . . . 
This doctrine was promptly seized upon as a boon 
by the special interests and by all who believed at 
heart in the government of the many for the benefit 
of the few. It has virtually made the courts the 
dominant power in every State in the Union. When- 
ever any progressive statute has not been in accord 
with the economic views entertained by the courts, 
they have generally exercised their power to declare 
such statute unconstitutional, because it was not 'due 
process of law/ " 

The Federal Constitution gives to the Supreme 
Court created under that instrument, the power to de- 
clare invalid any law enacted by a State that is incon- 
sistent with the national Constitution or the statutes 
of Congress and treaties. Such a power it was neces- 
sary to vest in the Federal court in order to prevent 
endless conflict and confusion. But the Federal Con- 
stitution did not give to the Supreme Court power to 
invalidate a statute of Congress, nor does any State 
Constitution give to its courts power to invalidate a 
statute of the legislature. This is power assumed by 
the courts, another great stretch of judicial preroga- 
tive. Inasmuch as a fundamental principle of con- 
stitutions is that all powers not conferred are reserved 



- 



44 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 



to the people, the declaring of statutes unconstitutional 
is itself unconstitutional. It is pure judicial usurpa- 
tion, and the power, while sometimes wisely exercised, 
is so much more often abused to frustrate the peo- 
ple's will, that it must be taken from the courts. 
Judges have themselves raised the issue whether their 
will or the will of the people shall be the law of the 
land, and they have no right to complain if, in con- 
sequence, the people regard them as enemies. 

When a layman speaks bold words like these, the 
conservative element among us lift hands of holy hor- 
ror and exclaim. But does anything said above go 
further than these words from the late Justice Har- 
lan, of the United States Supreme Court : "When 
the American people come to the conclusion that the 
judiciary of this land is usurping to itself the func- 
tions of the legislative department of the govern- 
ment we will find trouble. Ninety millions of people 
— all sorts of people — are not going to submit to the 
usurpation by the judiciary of the functions of other 
parts of the government and the power on its part to 
declare what is the public policy of the United 
States." " 

Whenever this question is raised somebody is sure 
to urge the importance of preserving an "independent 
judiciary.' , Independent judges in a democracy? In- 
dependent of whom? If by that is meant that judges 
are to be independent of the people there is an end of 

1 Much more to the same effect will be found in Justice Har- 
lan's remarkable dissenting opinion in the Standard Oil Com- 
pany versus United States, 221 U. S. Reports. 



THE PROBLEM OF "LAWLESSNESS" 345 

democracy — in that case we have judicial oligarchy. 
Are we willing to submit to that? Are we ready to 
be ruled by judges as our ancestors were by kings? 
By their strained interpretations, which not infre- 
quently reverse the intended meaning of a statute, by 
their reckless declarations that this or that statute 
which judges do not approve is unconstitutional, our 
courts have finally landed us in this ridiculous situa- 
tion : Despotic Russia and semi-despotic Germany and 
Austria, together with monarchic Great Britain and 
Italy and even Spain, may have liberal laws for the 
righting of social wrongs, but democratic United 
States, "free America," may not have such laws. The 
sacred bench forbids. The will of the people, the de- 
cisions of their representatives, are not to count. Our 
constitutions are no longer charts of progress; they 
have been made by courts the shield of privilege and 
social wrong, unsurmountable barriers to the people's 
demand for reform. And this is the political system, 
this is the government that we have boasted for these 
generations to be the most liberal, the most enlight- 
ened and the most free in the world! 

Behold and admire then, dearly beloved, this "law 
and order" which we are exhorted, in the name of lib- 
erty and the interests of society, even in the name of 
morality and religion, to respect and uphold. It is 
not to be denied by one who coolly surveys the whole 
matter that our courts, judges, lawyers, police, jails, 
prisons — the whole system of law and order — consti- 
tute together what deserves to be named a system for 
administration of injustice and defense of oppression. 



346 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

It becomes a fair question for debate whether they do 
not oftener prevent justice than promote justice. 
While professing to secure liberty, they are doing 
their utmost to destroy liberty. No appeal to the char- 
acter of individuals will affect this conviction. For 
this is no question between "good" judges and "bad" 
judges — comparatively few of our judges have been 
"bad." It is a question between enlightened and un- 
enlightened judges, between men who are in bondage 
to precedents and outworn principles and men who are 
in sympathy with their own times and share the high- 
est ethical and social ideals of their fellows. It is not 
a question of "good law" (as lawyers understand that 
phrase) versus "bad law." The decisions that do so 
much wrong to the people are nearly all "good law." 
That is just the trouble; for in these cases the better 
the law the greater the injustice. The precise need is 
that the law be changed. 

Here is where not only the judiciary, but substan- 
tially the whole legal profession, fails to comprehend. 
The evolution of production from hand manufacture 
to machine, from simple tools to complex, from the 
little shop to the great factory has made a revolution 
in the status of the laborer. It has changed him from 
a condition of independence to a condition of depend- 
ence, from freeman into wage-slave. The old legal 
maxims and rules no longer apply. But our courts 
are blind to this great change. The highest court of 
our greatest State not long ago used this language : 
"It cannot be conceived how the cigarmaker is to be 
improved in his health or his morals by forcing him 



THE PROBLEM OF "LAWLESSNESS" 347 

from his home and its hallowed associations and be- 
neficent influences to ply his trade elsewhere." If the 
learned judge who wrote this opinion knows anything 
about a New York tenement his words are nauseous 
cant; if not, he displays ignorance of commonest so- 
cial facts for which a child ought to blush. 

This is the sin of our judges, that they have failed 
to understand their own social order. They have 
not yet discovered that the old saws of Coke and 
Blackstone no longer fit modern facts. They are en- 
gaged in applying a collection of legal precedents, ac- 
cumulated through the experience of a society that has 
passed away, to a society with unprecedented condi- 
tions. They have gained no glimpse of the fact that 
there has been a greater change in economic and social 
conditions in the last hundred years than in any thou- 
sand years of the world's previous history — that there 
is more change now in every decade than in any cen- 
tury previous to the eighteenth. Laws and institutions 
of a century ago, not to say several centuries old, are 
no more applicable to the world in which we are liv- 
ing than to the planet Mars. The law must bend to 
the new conditions or it must break. 

Again, lest this be thought the extravagance of an 
uninstructed layman, let us hear from one of the fore- 
most lawyers of the United States, Frederic R. Cou- 
dert, of New York : "In this last generation economic 
changes have so modified actual human relations that 
the American law of to-day reflects the views of the 
dead rather than of the living, and is in many re- 



348 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

spects far behind that of England, France or Ger- 
many." 1 

Nor is it any reply to Mr. Coudert's tremendous 
indictment to say that our judges are honest, if mis- 
taken. It is true that capitalism does not bribe judges 
— as a rule; the Archbald case proved that it some- 
times does — not because it is too virtuous, however, 
but because it has no need. The interests of the legal 
profession are mainly with capitalism; lawyers would 
starve if they depended on the poor for a living; and 
from the ranks of men so biased by economic interest 
and lifelong habit judges must perforce be selected. 
Men elected or appointed to judicial positions are al- 
most wholly lawyers whose practice has been as coun- 
sel of 'corporations and other "malefactors of great 
wealth," and whose experiences, sympathies and whole 
view of law and of life are on the side of the capital- 
ist. Why waste money in bribery of one who is al- 
ready the creature of capitalism, devoted to its inter- 
ests, thinking only its thoughts? The little brothers 
of the rich may be confidently trusted to decide all 
questions "right." 

Ill 

Possibly the deepest grievance against "law and 
order" cherished by the working class is the convic- 
tion that the system is so unfairly administered. Even 
with all its defects, it might be borne with more pa- 
tience, if there was one law for all. But the small 
1 "Certainty and Justice," p. 305. 



THE PROBLEM OF "LAWLESSNESS 349 

thief is sent to jail; the big thief is sent to Congress. 
Before a judge, afterwards impeached for corruption, 
two smugglers were brought on the same day. One 
was a poor Greek, consumptive, without friends, who 
had committed a slight technical offense, and he was 
sent to prison for long months. Another was a rich 
merchant, who had been systematically defrauding 
the government for years, to the amount of at least 
a million dollars, and perhaps many times that; he 
was let off with a fine of $25,000, notwithstanding the 
district attorney pressed for a jail sentence as the 
only effective penalty. And these two cases are typi- 
cal of the everyday working of the whole system: 
one law for the rich, another for the poor ; a maximum 
of protection for property, a minimum of protection 
for the person. 

The virtuous denunciations of the McNamaras and 
other criminals of the working class, with which press 
and pulpit ring from time to time, are more loud than 
convincing. Our ethical instructors presume on the 
short memory of the public. But some have not for- 
gotten that, not so many years ago, the heads of the 
Standard Oil Trust were indicted and tried for the 
crime of conspiring to blow up a rival refinery. It 
was lawless destruction of property quite as flagrant 
as anything of which the McNamaras were guilty. 
But there was this significant difference between the 
two cases : the millionaires were not convicted. No 
Detective Burns was employed by the State to pro- 
cure evidence against them. More recently, the head 
of the Woolen Trust was indicted and tried for con- 



350 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

spiracy to plant dynamite in Lawrence, Massachusetts, 
in order to discredit the striking employees of his 
mills. No evidence was found in either case directly 
to connect the eminently respectable men at the head 
of these trusts with a disgraceful crime. We should 
be foolish to expect such evidence. Men like these 
are wise in their day and generation. They call their 
henchmen, put a large sum of money into their hands, 
and say something like this : "You need not account 
for this money; don't tell me what you do — I don't 
want to know — but get results." And the law holds 
them guiltless, since the law is not made for the 
Rockefellers and Woods, but is made by the Rocke- 
fellers and Woods for the McNamaras. 

A leader of public opinion and a professed teacher 
of Christian ethics, the Outlook, approves the ac- 
quittal of Wood, on the ground that paying out a 
large sum of money not to be accounted for is a very 
different thing from a criminal conspiracy. This is 
probably law, but it is not sense or justice. On the 
contrary, if law is to correspond with equity, it must 
be held that such an act is the very essence of the 
conspiracy, to which the money is indispensable. 
While statutes, courts and Christian moralists take 
their present view of the matter, the chief offender in 
a criminal conspiracy, the man who makes criminal 
outrages possible by financing them — the man who 
hires crimes to be committed, to speak without dis- 
guise — will escape legal responsibility and almost all 
public contumely, provided he takes pains to keep 
himself ignorant of the details. So long as such 



THE PROBLEM OF "LAWLESSNESS" 35 1 

ethics are taught by Christian teachers of high stand- 
ing, so long will Christianity be a scoff and a mock 
on the lips of the workers. And deservedly so, for 
such teachers have turned their backs on the Master 
who commanded his followers to "judge righteous 
judgment." 

Why do Christian teachers vie with the hirelings 
of the kept press in defending capitalist ethics? Be- 
cause they are themselves beneficiaries' of capitalism 
and biased in its favor. 1 Whether the bias is con- 
scious or unconscious it is not necessary to consider; 
the effect is that they become partners in all forms 
of social guilt. Every dividend paid by an Ameri- 
can railway represents swindling and manslaughter: 
every dollar reeks with fraud and drips with blood. 
Every dividend paid by the Steel Trust is the product 
of theft and the price of human lives. In less degree 
this is true of all the profits of industrialism. When 
a preacher, an editor, a president of a university, 
whose pockets bulge with money so gained, shrieks 
about the crimes committed by workingmen and deals 
out high moral advice concerning the preservation of 
law and order — that is, the maintenance of the pres- 
ent system of rascality and murder — he affords a 
sight to provoke men to laughter and angels to tears. 

1 The assertion that the press and the university and the Church 
are subsidized and controlled by Capitalism is sometimes denied 
and oftener doubted. But Mr. Mellen testified that the New 
Haven Railway employed Professor Bruce Wyman, of Harvard, 
at $10,000 a year to deliver lectures in the interest of his road; 
and admitted that a thousand New England newspapers were 
practically in its pay through a "campaign for publicity." 



35 2 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

It must be apparent to the most careless observer 
that the mass of American people are fast losing con- 
fidence in their laws, their leaders and their govern- 
ment. Is there any other cause for this than their 
perception that the laws are unjust and oppressive, 
their leaders insincere and rascally and the govern- 
ment weak and ineffective for good, though all too 
effective for evil? But there is still another serious 
complaint against the law: it fails to secure justice 
between man and man. It is not true, as some say, 
that the poor man can no longer obtain justice ; often 
he can and does ; his grievance is that he has no cer- 
tainty of getting justice. The chances are at least a 
hundred to one against him. Nearly every State in 
the Union has in its fundamental law an assertion of 
equal rights for all citizens : that every man is en- 
titled to equal protection of person and property, to 
equal redress of injuries through legal process, "jus- 
tice equally and without denial, promptly and with- 
out delay." Beautiful sentiments! But the facts? 

Suppose a rich man wrongs a poor man; suppose 
the employee of a great corporation is wronged ; what 
is his chance of redress? Poor men do win verdicts 
in such cases — sometimes — but usually only to have 
them set aside on appeal again and again, until, if 
they finally win, the costs eat up the verdict and the 
net result is denial of redress. A. poor Irish workman 
lost his sight by a delayed explosion in a stone quarry. 
This happened in 1897; and in 1900 a jury gave him 
a verdict of $20,000 which the higher court set aside. 
The case dragged on, and in 19 13 a jury again found 



THE PROBLEM OF "LAWLESSNESS" 353 

a verdict of $10,000, and at last accounts the case 
was still dragging along. The court records are full 
of cases like this. Law and order means that every 
disadvantage and obstacle will be thrown in the way 
of the poor man, if he asks for justice, and that every 
advantage and assistance will be given to his adver- 
sary, the rich man or rich corporation. This has be- 
come so notorious a fact that even President Taft 
acknowledged it, in an address delivered at Chicago, 
September 16, 1909: "We must make it so that the 
poor man will have as nearly as possible an equal op- 
portunity in litigating with the rich man; and under 
present conditions, ashamed as we may be of it, this 
is not the fact." 

Mr. Frederick W. Taylor, in an examination as 
witness before the Industrial Relations Commission at 
Washington (April, 19 14) maintained that, as be- 
tween employer and employee, "in 999 times out of 
1,000 justice is done. If it were not so this would be 
a horrible world to live in." But the number daily in- 
creases of those who believe the fact to be that barely 
once in a thousand times is justice done and that con- 
sequently this is a horrible world to live in. 



IV 



In the struggle between capital and labor the courts 
have upheld capital with a uniformity that becomes 
monotonous when one examines the record. In doing 
this, judges have often cast consistency and reason 



354 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

to the winds. For example, the Supreme Court of 
the United States has declared the blacklist legal and 
the boycott illegal, notwithstanding the fact that they 
are essentially the same. For when the workers de- 
clare a boycott, they blacklist employers; and when 
employers blacklist employees they declare a boycott 
on labor. But when it comes to "law and order," 
sauce for goose is not sauce for gander. In the case 
of Boyer versus Western Union Telegraph Company, 
the court held : "An employer having discharged em- 
ployees belonging to a labor union has the right to 
keep a book containing their names, and showing the 
reason of their discharge, and to invite inspection 
thereof by other employers, even though the latter 
therefore refuse to hire the discharged employees." 
But in the case of Gompers, Mitchell and Morrison 
versus Bucks Stove and Range Company, the court 
held that it was an unlawful conspiracy for workers 
to print in their papers such statements as "unfair" or 
"we don't patronize," because these were verbal acts 
against property. 1 

The law of this "free" country, therefore, is that 
employers may make it impossible for a man to sell 
his labor anywhere, and so turn him into a pauper 
or a tramp, but if he and his fellow workers attempt 
to prevent employers from selling their product such 
workers become criminals. When the employers do 
a thing, it is "combination" and legal ; when employees 

1 The courts of twenty-five States have also decided that the 
boycott is illegal. Laidler, "Boycotts and the Labor Problem," 
p. 236. 



THE PROBLEM OF LAWLESSNESS 355 

do precisely the same thing, it is "conspiracy" and a 
crime. And this is no abstract question of law; for 
under this decision Gompers and Mitchell and Mor- 
rison have been sentenced to nine months' imprison- 
ment and a heavy fine. A higher court may relieve 
them from this sentence on appeal, but it is an in- 
effaceable stigma on "law and order" that it should 
ever have been imposed. 1 Under the same decision a 
jury has rendered a verdict of $80,000 against the 
hat-makers of Danbury, Connecticut, which under the 
Sherman act must be multiplied by three, and with 
added costs amounts to a quarter million dollars' pen- 
alty assessed on these working men for doing what 
the plaintiff in the suit, the manufacturing hatters, 
might do with the full approval of the court. 2 Is 
anybody, not hopelessly biased by his economic inter- 
ests, so lost to all sense of fairness and decency as to 
call this justice? 

And the injustice of these blowing-hot-and-cold 

.decisions becomes harder to bear when we consider 

how this came to be law : it is the result of a forced 

construction by the courts of the Sherman act. Now, 

the Sherman act, as everybody knows, was passed by 

1 In June, 1914, the United States Supreme Court reversed this 
decision of the lower court on a technicality (holding that the 
statute of limitations invalidated the sentence) without express- 
ing any opinion on the merits of the case. It is still uncertain, 
therefore, whether these men would have been lawfully convicted 
had action been taken sooner. 

8 On December 18, 1913, the United States Circuit Court of 
Appeals affirmed the verdict given in the District Court of Con- 
necticut, October 11, 1912. The case has, of course, been ap- 
pealed to the Supreme Court. 



35& THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

Congress in obedience to an imperative popular de- 
mand that something be done to limit corporate power. 
It was the first of those measures designed to "bust 
the Trusts." Under it numerous suits and prosecu- 
tions have been begun, and some have been ended, 
against great corporations, all of which have failed 
to produce any result worth mentioning. The last 
tooth of the Sherman act, as regards the Trusts, was 
pulled by the Supreme Court when it read into the 
statute the word "reasonable," x which Congress had 
refused to insert by amendment, — a thing that Presi- 
dent Taft had said in a message the court had no 
right to do, and which the court in a previous de- 
cision had itself declared would be an assumption on 
its part of legislative powers. Nevertheless, it cheer- 
fully assumed these powers, and so amended the Sher- 
man act as to make it quite innocuous to Trusts. But 
the same court supplied the act with a full set of 
teeth as regards workingmen, who were never in the 
minds of the lawmakers when they enacted the statute. 
Under pretext that the proceedings of labor organiza- 
tions affect inter-State commerce, they have been 
brought under jurisdiction of this act, and on this 
strained and far-fetched interpretation the boycott 

1 The Supreme Court followed up its doctrine of "reasonable" 
restraint of trade, with a twin doctrine of reasonable adultera- 
tion, in interpreting the pure food law. It held that it is not 
unlawful to use poisonous substances in preparing food, and 
even to leave them in the food, unless it can be proved that 
poison is present in sufficient quantities to endanger health. 
Thus, instead of putting on the manufacturer the burden of 
proving that his food is good, on the public is thrown the bur- 
den of proving it to be bad. 



THE PROBLEM OF LAWLESSNESS 357 

has been condemned in the Federal courts and is pun- 
ishable under contempt proceedings. This is a fair 
instance of the ways numberless in which the courts 
are to-day encroaching on our liberties. Laws in- 
tended for protection of the people are turned by 
courts into laws for oppression of the people. And in 
the sacred name of "law and order" we are bidden 
tamely to submit or be regarded as enemies of so- 
ciety. 

But it is not the courts alone that we have to con- 
sider in this matter; it is the whole auxiliary machin- 
ery of "law and order." How is this machinery used? 
In any even-handed way between rich and poor, be- 
tween workers and employers? It is used exactly as 
courts are used, uniformly to uphold the interests of 
capitalism. There is no variation in the facts, in 
whatever community there may be controversy be- 
tween employers and employed. The police are in- 
variably employed in the interest of employers, nomi- 
nally to preserve law and order, really to break the 
strike. Invariably? No, there has been a single re- 
corded exception. The mayor of Indianapolis, in 191 3, 
refused to permit use of the police of that city in 
this manner, but he was speedily forced to resign, and 
under his successor the good old game of skull-crack- 
ing and wanton arrests went merrily on. Everywhere 
the official preservers of law and order are guilty of 
brutal violence, make unlawful arrests, and in other 
ways demonstrate their ability to bring forth from 
labor troubles a sanguinary peace. 



358 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

They are invariably supported in their proceedings 
by the approval of our "best citizens," that is, mem- 
bers of the capitalistic class who wish the revolt of 
wage-slaves against the system that oppresses them 
to be subdued at any sacrifice. Not infrequently, in- 
deed generally, the pulpit is also loud in approval of 
the police and in disapproval of the strikers. And in 
times of industrial peace, ministers who thus range 
themselves against the workers are often heard to won- 
der why the American workingman has lost his in- 
terest in religion and can no longer be induced to 
come to church. 

Law and order must be judged by their fruits. So 
judged, the conclusion is unavoidable that they are 
intended to keep down the lower classes, not to re- 
strain the higher, who by their conduct declare that 
they hold themselves to be above law. Respect such 
law and order? Who can, except those whose, inter- 
ests it promotes and is intended to promote? Until 
such things as we have been considering cease to be, 
until law is so reformed and its administration so 
improved that they cannot be, it will remain true that 
in this country of theoretical equal rights there is one 
law for the rich and another for the poor. This is 
not, as we teach our children to sing, "the land of the 
free and the home of the brave," but the land of the 
rich and the home of the slave. We must insist on 
one law for all, or we shall soon have law for none. 
If there is not reform, and that right speedily, there 
will be revolution. 



THE PROBLEM OF "LAWLESSNESS" 359 



V 



Greatest grievance of all is the fact that, whenever 
the system they have themselves established fails at 
any point to achieve its purpose of protecting the 
present social order, the beneficiaries and representa- 
tives of that order never hesitate to violate their own 
system and fall back on pure brute force without 
color of law. They are like a gambler who insists 
on playing with loaded dice, and when, in spite of 
that advantage, he sees himself about to lose, sweeps 
all the stakes from the table and pockets them, and 
draws his pistol on any player who objects. 

Theodore Roosevelt, who professes to be the friend 
of the poor laborer, said in a Decoration Day speech, 
in 191 1, that he was hated because men knew that he 
wouldn't let the Constitution stand in the way of pun- 
ishing them if they did wrong. Let that sink into 
your consciousness, reader : when Mr. Roosevelt de- 
cides — and of course his decision is infallible and irre- 
formable — that certain men deserve to be punished, 
he will not let a little obstacle like the Constitution 
stand in his way. The importance of this declaration 
consists mainly in the fact that Mr. Roosevelt is the 
enfant terrible of American politics; he has blurted 
out what the entire capitalistic class thinks and does. 
The history of the past few years is full of instances 
in which those who held in their hands power to pun- 
ish have not let the Constitution stand in their way. 
And thus far the men who have power are represen- 



360 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

tatives of the capitalistic order, and they have pun- 
ished men who were misguided enough, criminal 
enough (from their point of view) to challenge that 
order and oppose it. One sometimes wonders if they 
ever think, and, if they do, whether it never occurs 
to them that they are furnishing terrible precedents 
for revolutionaries? For the only party that has 
much to lose by the subversion of law and order is 
the capitalistic. The workers, as Marx and Engels 
long ago reminded them, have nothing to lose but their 
chains. 

A few recent cases, in which the dominant order 
has shown its contempt for law, will better enable us 
to comprehend the principles and procedure of capital- 
ism. One case was the strike of the workers in the 
woolen mills of Lawrence, Massachusetts, the main 
facts of which the subsidized press did not succeed 
entirely in suppressing — thanks, not to the press, but 
to a Congressional investigation. People have not yet 
had time to forget the brutality of police and militia 
during that strike. They have not forgotten how a 
chief of police overrode all laws, and even all constitu- 
tional guarantees, and prevented parents from sending 
their starving children where they might be fed. And 
probably they have not forgotten the burst of indig- 
nation from the whole country, nor the haste with 
which that particular injustice was revoked. Nor will 
people soon forget the attempt to fasten the crime of 
constructive murder upon two of the leaders of the 
strike, Ettor and Giovanetti, and the keeping them in 
jail eight months without bail, when their only real 



THE PROBLEM OF "LAWLESSNESS" 361 

offense, as every intelligent citizen in the United 
States knew, was that they had led a successful strike, 
which made known to the whole nation the practical 
operation of "Schedule K," and the conditions under 
which a great body of workingmen were compelled 
to labor and live. Because a woman was killed during 
the street disturbances (as many still believe, by a 
policeman), these men were to be sent to the electric 
chair, if the beneficiaries of Schedule K could compass 
it. But during the same troubles one of the brave 
militia who had been called in to preserve "law and 
order" bayoneted a young boy in the back, inflicting 
a wound from which he died, and no attempt was 
ever made to hold anybody responsible for that cow- 
ardly murder. 

A second case was on the other side of the conti- 
nent, in San Diego, California. Some of the so- 
called best citizens of that town organized a band 
of vigilantes, who patrolled the streets under arms, 
and seized and beat and drove from town every man 
suspected of connection with the Industrial Workers 
of the World. One would naturally suppose that the 
members of this organization had been guilty of some 
great outrage to provoke such action — that they had 
blown up some building and killed its inmates, per- 
haps. Nothing of the kind : their only offense was 
that they had been conducting a vigorous and suc- 
cessful propaganda, by holding meetings on the street 
corners, and insisted on exercising their rights as 
American citizens to free assembly and free speech. 
The citizens determined to crush out the society. In 



362 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

doing this they were guilty of outrages that would 
put an Apache Indian to the blush. One victim was 
covered with hot tar, rolled in the sand, and then the 
vigilantes branded his back with the letters I. W. W., 
using for the purpose the tips of their lighted cigars. 
A man was arrested and beaten nearly to death for 
the heinous crime of wearing a red necktie. One man 
was arrested for reading the Bible aloud, and another 
for reading the Declaration of Independence. 1 One 
can understand these two arrests : The very mention 
of the Bible and the Declaration in such a place as 
San Diego had become would be such condemnation 
of the town as could not be tolerated by any self- 
respecting vigilantes or police. They even turned the 
fire hose on citizens engaged in peaceful religious 
meetings ! 

A third case came from Louisiana, where the Lum- 
ber Trust for weeks waged civil war, not only against 
their striking employees, but the people at large. All 
pretense of lawful government was abandoned in sev- 
eral counties; troops and armed mercenaries marched 
and countermarched through the towns and country 
roads, shooting and marauding at their pleasure. 
Men were arrested and imprisoned daily, without war- 

1 Over 300 persons were arrested and imprisoned during this 
reign of terror at San Diego, 989 were assaulted and beaten, two 
were killed outright, and 55 were illegally exiled. And our sub- 
sidized newspapers told their readers almost nothing about this. 
Several of the persons arrested were convicted of alleged of- 
fenses, but the proceedings were so disgracefully unjust that 
Governor Johnson promptly pardoned them. Most of the per- 
sons arrested were set at liberty without trial, or even any 
formal charge against them. 



THE PROBLEM OF "LAWLESSNESS" 363 

rant, bail or counsel. And, after these minions of the 
Trust had killed several members of the brotherhood 
of timber workers, forty other members were lodged 
in jail on the charge of having caused the death of 
their fellows. It is indeed a pity that the power of 
Trusts ends with the grave, otherwise the shades of 
the men whom they had done to death would doubt- 
less have been arrested and charged with their own 
murder ! 

The annals of Stuart tyranny will be searched in 
vain for a parallel to what the capitalistic order did 
in the strike of the coal miners of West Virginia. 
The owners of the mines were also owners of the 
houses in which the miners Jived. The striking min- 
ers were evicted from their houses and compelled to 
live during the rigors of winter in tents and huts on 
the hillsides. Having been unable, even with the aid 
of the powers of nature, to subdue these men and 
force them to return to work without redress of griev- 
ances, the owners prevailed on the governor to de- 
clare martial law, under the pretext that the strike 
was an "insurrection" under the meaning of the law 
— a palpable lie from which neither the capitalists nor 
their tools in office shrank for a moment. The Labor 
Argus, a newspaper of Charleston, criticized the gov- 
ernor and the courts and militia for their methods. 
Governor Hatfield ordered the paper suppressed, and 
its plant was confiscated and its editors imprisoned. 
The governor had the assurance to announce that he 
did this in the interest of "law and order." This sub- 
limity of impudence holds the record for the pres- 



364 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

ent, and so far surpasses any previous achievement 
that it is almost worthy of admiration. 

Miners were arrested on various charges, tried by 
courts martial, with such rights to calling of witnesses 
and counsel as it pleased the court to give them, and 
without verdict of jury. Among those arrested was 
"Mother" Jones, a woman over eighty years of age, 
whose services to miners have gained her a national 
repute. She and others obtained a writ of habeas 
corpus and were brought before the Supreme Court 
of the State. February 28, 19 13, that court rendered 
its decision, through presiding Judge Poffenberger, in 
these words : "We think that, inasmuch as the statute 
says the Governor may arrest and detain certain per- 
sons who are aiding and abetting insurrection until 
the insurrection is suppressed and order restored, it 
authorizes him to do so in such cases as this, and 
there is not a violation of the constitutional provis- 
ion against the preservation [deprivation?] of life, 
liberty and property without due process of law." 

The language of the learned judge is somewhat 
incoherent, as is not infrequently the case in judicial 
opinions; but one gathers without difficulty that "due 
process of law," which has done so much to preserve 
property from interference, is but a barrier of straw 
against invasion of liberty and life. Against the 
greed of employers it interposes no obstacle, but when 
an eight hour day for women or some other measure 
for the benefit of workers is in question, it becomes a 
wall of adamant. 

If it were possible to outdo these proceedings in 



THE PROBLEM OF "LAWLESSNESS" 365 

West Virginia, Paterson, New Jersey, is entitled to 
that honor. The strike of the silk workers there in 
the spring of 19 13 was the signal for the suspension 
of all statutes and constitutions by Chief of Police 
Bimson and the local courts. Among the hundreds 
of illegal acts, the arrest of Messrs. Hayward, Lessig 
and Tresca, the three most prominent leaders of the 
workers, is preeminent. They were charged with un- 
lawful assemb 1 age and sentenced to six months in 
jail by Recorder Carroll. The following November 
the Supreme Court of the State set aside the convic- 
tion, in an opinion of Chief Justice Bergen, in which 
he severely scored the court below, declaring that the 
record contained not one particle of testimony war- 
ranting the conviction. 

But the general sentiment in Paterson was that 
"the I. W. W. must go," and with this the "best citi- 
zens" and the clergy entirely sympathized. Not one 
voice was raised in pulpit or press against these arbi- 
trary and illegal and brutal proceedings. The Indus- 
trial Workers of the World were charged with being 
an anarchistic organization, practicers of violence and 
lawlessness : therefore to suppress them by anarchy, 
violence and lawlessness was quite proper. Probably 
the clergy of Paterson are now wondering why the 
workers hate ministers and will not come to church. 

Patrick Quinlan, a labor leader not a citizen of 
Paterson, was convicted and received a jail sentence 
for addressing a meeting that he did not attend and 
for saying words that he never uttered. This added 
a touch of opera bouffe to otherwise somber doings. 



3^6 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

Released on bail, he was again arrested and con- 
victed for making a remark derogatory to the chief 
of police. Those not afraid to speak evil of dignities 
fared badly in Paterson in those days. Time and 
space would fail to tell of the brutal clubbings, the 
wanton arrests, the interference with meetings, that 
marked the course of the strike. Against law? Bim- 
son was the law. 

If we were dependent for knowledge of these facts 
on newspaper reports, we might well refuse them 
credence; but they have been abundantly established 
by testimony in a semi- judicial inquiry, conducted by 
the Federal Commission on Industrial Relations. The 
editor of the leading Paterson newspaper admitted the 
writing of editorials during the strike in which he 
advocated the driving of the Industrial Workers of 
the World out of Paterson, by violence if necessary. 
"Business men" of high standing, after the passions 
aroused by the strike had had a year to subside, testi- 
fied that they believed the I. W. W. to be a not for 
the good of the community," and that it was there- 
fore the duty of the police to drive them out of the 
city. They admitted that this would be "technically 
illegal," that it would be a violation of his oath for a 
policeman to take such action; but that the officer 
would be justified in violating law and oath, "if there- 
by he could serve the interests of the community," 
that is, the interests of employers and "business men." 
Since that is the idea of "law and order" that is held 
by prominent citizens of Paterson, nobody should be 
surprised by what occurred there. But when the Mc- 



THE PROBLEM OF "LAWLESSNESS" 367 

Namaras violate law, what a commotion these same 
"business men" then make! 

Having suppressed, at least temporarily, free assem- 
blage and free speech, the authorities of Paterson re- 
solved also to suppress freedom of the press. Alex- 
ander Scott edited and published a socialistic paper 
called the Weekly Issue, at Passaic, several miles from 
Paterson. He criticized the doings in Paterson, and 
chief Bimson as head doer, in an editorial of which 
the New York Tribune said : "We have read as severe 
criticisms of municipal administration and of their 
police as those of Scott in many papers published in 
many places." On the charge of attempting to sub- 
vert government, Scott was tried and convicted, and 
received an indeterminate sentence of from one to 
fifteen years in prison. The Supreme Court has not 
yet passed upon his case, but in the meantime these 
words from Collier's are worth considering : "We do 
not believe any court in America will sustain this law 
or the sentence of this editor. The passage of the 
law itself in the form in which it was passed is a 
shining example of legislative incompetence, and the 
trial of Scott is a piece of judicial folly." x 

A year ago we should have thought and said that 

1 In April, 1914, the Supreme Court of New Jersey reversed 
the conviction of Scott. Justice Kalish, in his decision, severely 
criticized Judge Klenert, the trial judge, for not quashing the 
indictment or ordering a verdict of acquittal. He affirmed in 
strong terms the right of free speech and freedom of the press. 
The character of the "courts of justice" in Paterson during the 
strike is shown by the fact that every conviction, save one, has 
been reversed, and the one exception is still pending in the 
courts. 



368 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

nothing could surpass the lawlessness of Paterson or 
the brutality of West Virginia, but the spring of 
1 9 14 gave the American people a new object-lesson 
of the exploitation of the class that works by the 
class that shirks. Almost simultaneous strikes oc- 
curred among the workers in the copper mines of 
Michigan and the coal mines of Colorado. There was 
nothing new or specially instructive in the Michigan 
strike, where, after a long struggle, the miners were 
compelled to return to work on the employers' terms. 
Nothing need be said regarding this matter, beyond 
the comment of the New York World: 

"What the employers do as a matter of course, it is 
unlawful for the employees to do. The employers 
combine; they monopolize; they set aside law; they 
hire fighting men; they make war. Because the em- 
ployers have had these advantages and have refused 
to arbitrate, they have won a famous victory over a 
naturally industrious and peaceable population, which 
has not been worn out so much as it has been starved 
out. Some triumphs are worth while and some are 
not. In this country injustice and hunger never yet 
made a conquest that endured." 

The facts about the Colorado struggle were for a 
time difficult to learn, owing to manipulation of 
the news by almost the whole of the American press; 
and so far as possible the facts have been kept from 
the people until now. But some things have been ad- 
mitted or established under oath. The strikers made 
seven demands, five of which had been granted by acts 
of legislature, but persistently refused by the mine 



THE PROBLEM OF "LAWLESSNESS" 369 

owners. That these grievances of the miners were not 
imaginary, is fully established by this report of a Fed- 
eral grand jury, in September, 1913: "That State 
laws have not been enforced so as to give all persons 
concerned benefits which are derivable therefrom; that 
coal companies have nominated, elected and controlled 
county officers; that county officers elected by the 
coal companies have shown undue activity in control- 
ling elections, having in one instance changed the pre- 
cinct boundaries, presumably to eliminate unfavorable 
votes of the miners, and have thus aroused not only 
political but social dissatisfaction; that many camp 
marshals, whose appointments and salaries are con- 
trolled by coal companies, have exercised a system of 
espionage and have resorted to arbitrary powers of 
police control, acting as judge and jury and passing 
sentence; that camp marshals have brutally assaulted 
miners; that miners cannot complain of real griev- 
ances without being discharged; that the scrip sys- 
tem is still in effect; that miners feel under an unjust 
obligation to trade at the company stores because of 
the attitude of mine superintendents; that check 
weighmen have been denied the miners." - 1 

When the strike began, the usual tactics were em- 
ployed by the operators : Guards were hired and 
armed, strike-breakers were brought in, and the gov- 
ernor was persuaded to call out the militia. The pri- 
vate guards were enrolled and uniformed as members 

1 Speech of the Hon. Edward Keating, representative from 
Southern Colorado, in the House of Representatives, May 30, 
1914. 



370 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

of the militia and machine guns were added to their 
equipment. At this stage a Congressional Committee 
began an investigation, and among the witnesses called 
was Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., as the representa- 
tive of his father, who owns a controlling interest in 
one of the largest corporations involved in the strike. 
Mr. Rockefeller said, among other things : "I have 
done what I regard as best in the interests of the 
employees and the large investment I represent. We 
have put the best men obtainable in charge, and are 
relying on their judgment. My conscience entirely 
acquits me. We would rather that the unfortunate 
conditions should continue and that we should lose 
all the millions invested than that American work- 
men should be deprived of their right to work for 
whom they please. That is the great principle at 
stake. It is a national issue." 

In a later public statement Mr. Rockefeller said that 
less than ten per cent, of his employees are union men. 
The other 90 per cent., he affects to believe, are in 
such fear of their lives from this small minority, and 
so apprehensive that they may be compelled to work 
for shorter hours and higher wages than he offers 
them, that they have most unwillingly joined the 
strike. And he is nobly determined to protect them, 
if it costs a considerable part of his great fortune! 
There is, indeed, a principle at stake in this matter, 
but it is quite other than that stated by Mr. Rockefel- 
ler : it is the right of the employer to compel the miner 
to work the longest possible number of hours at the 
smallest possible wage, and to resist the union through 



THE PROBLEM OF LAWLESSNESS 37 1 

which alone the miner can deal collectively and there- 
fore effectively with his employer. 

Fifteen days after the capitalists had thus an- 
nounced their ultimatum through Mr. Rockefeller, the 
"militia" opened fire on the tent-colony of miners at 
Ludlow. To escape the hail of bullets, the women 
and children crawled into pits that had been dug for 
shelter; but the canvas tents caught fire, and twenty- 
nine persons perished there — including two women 
and eleven little children, some of them babes in arms. 
Nothing but the prompt sending of Federal troops 
to Colorado by President Wilson prevented a bloody 
civil war. That the entire nation was horrified is 
no exaggeration. It brought home to many people, 
as nothing had ever done, as perhaps nothing else 
could ever have done, the fact that the ruling class 
of our country, the great capitalists, will stick at 
nothing: they are ready to exterminate all who op- 
pose them, rather than have labor controversies set- 
tled on principles of justice and humanity. 

The courts of Colorado, military or civil, will do 
nothing, or worse than nothing. Military tribunals 
have been busy ever since with "trials" that are a 
travesty of justice. Most of the guilty have been 
exonerated. One case was too flagrant for that: 
Lieutenant Linderfelt, of the militia, killed a Greek 
miner most obnoxious to the operators as one of 
the leaders of the strike, by beating him over the 
head with a rifle while he was under protection of 
a flag of truce. He admitted his act, and the court 
could do no less than find a verdict accordingly; but 



372 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

as a penalty sentenced him to be reduced five files in 
rank! How well this compares with the sentences 
of the McNamaras! 

One thing has been made clear by these events. 
At once and for all time to come, the right to employ 
armed guards must be taken from private persons 
and corporations. The maintenance of peace is a 
function of government; the State alone has the right 
to use force, and that only as a last resort. We have 
gone back to the private warfare of the Middle Ages. 
The new feudal nobles, called capitalists, have their 
condottieri and use them with as little scruple as 
marked the older feudalism. This is not law and or- 
der, but anarchy. At any cost, this private warfare 
must be suppressed. It is the negation of civilization 
and a reversion to barbarism. Let us say nothing 
more of the backwardness of Mexico in the ways of 
civilization and peace, until we have successfully 
solved this problem. In the meantime what has the 
Christian press and the Christian pulpit been saying 
about this matter? How has it been applying the 
Gospel of Jesus to this problem? There has been 
silence that might be felt! 



VI 



But are not the workers also violent and lawless? 
When forcible resistance is made to the social order, 
can society sit idly by and let things take their course ? 
The question is pertinent, and there can be only one 



THE PROBLEM OF "LAWLESSNESS" 373 

reply. Those who proclaim the Gospel of Jesus must 
oppose all efforts to better social conditions by vio- 
lence. They are servants of One who counsels sub- 
mission to wrong rather than forcible redress. So- 
cialism speaks with the same voice as religion on 
this point, though not with the same motive. The 
socialist perceives the teaching of history and experi- 
ence to be clear, that violence always reacts against 
the cause it is intended to promote. 

Let the advocates of the Gospel, however, take more 
care to insist that the principle be applied impartially 
to all classes of society. The minister of Christ 
should condemn cruel beatings and the shooting down 
of unarmed men and women and the bayoneting of 
boys, whether this is done by those who would destroy 
"law and order" or by those who think by such meth- 
ods to uphold it. One ethical measuring-wand must 
be applied to all men, rich or poor. And of the two 
kinds of violence, disciples of the Carpenter of Galilee 
would do well to be more lenient in judgment of the 
violence of workers goaded to desperation by their 
wrongs, and striking out blindly against they know 
not whom or what, than of the coldly calculated vio- 
lence of those who are striving to perpetuate these 
wrongs. Let teachers of Christian ethics reprobate 
the brutality of the servants of the law as strongly 
as the brutality of those whom they call the lawless. 
The followers of the poor and lowly Jesus ought to 
be found ranged with the oppressed, not with the 
oppressors. They should be able to see that murder 
is the same crime in the sight of God when done by 



374 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

the rich and powerful as when done by the poor and 
ignorant. The clergy should proclaim from the house- 
tops that the possession of wealth and intelligence 
and power lays a heavy burden of obligation on the 
possessors to do justly and to love mercy, and that 
to pretend to walk humbly with God is no excuse for 
lack of these qualities. Piety is not a substitute for 
righteousness. In short, what is demanded is a prac- 
tical reversal of the ethics taught in the average 
Christian pulpit to-day. Christianize "law and or- 
der/' and it will be respected and there will be no 
violence to suppress. 

Until such ethical principles as have been thus indi- 
cated are accepted and proclaimed, as an inseparable 
part of the Gospel of Jesus, there will remain a great 
gulf fixed between the workers and the Church. 
Until such ethics are embodied in law and order, let 
nobody expect to see law and order greeted with 
anything but derision and revolt by the workers. 
What many call "lawlessness" is a symptom of social 
health, not of social disease; it is a barometer of social 
evils. Resistance to injustice shows that the spirit of 
manhood is still alive. When a man or a class gets 
to the point where it takes abuse lying down, it has 
hardly manhood enough to be distinguished from the 
brutes. As Americans, we still boast that this is the 
one country under heaven in which the people will 
not remain supine under oppression and tamely sub- 
mit to organized injustice. 

In most of our American communities, we are com- 
pelled to conclude, there is no longer anything that 



THE PROBLEM OF "LAWLESSNESS" 375 

deserves the name of law or order. There is power, 
brutal force, but no law. Corporate power has shown 
its ability to break down every barrier that the civiliza- 
tion of five thousand years had succeeded in throwing 
about life and liberty. It has proceeded to suspend 
constitutions, nullify statutes, usurp all the functions 
of government, proclaim martial law and put men 
to death, banish them or imprison them at pleasure, 
without process of law. Corporate power has not 
merely done this once, it has done it in at least seven 
different States within the past five years, and has 
proved that it can and will do the like anywhere and 
as often as may be necessary. Could there be better 
preparation for a violent revolution than vast power 
thus lodged in the hands of an irresponsible few, 
power used without reference to law, controlling all 
the machinery of justice, and using police and courts 
in reckless oppression of all who stand in their way 
or oppose their will ? Can men see their dearest liber- 
ties contemptuously denied, ruthlessly overridden, and 
avoid the conclusion that peaceful methods of agita- 
tion are useless, that the only possible redress left 
them is appeal to force? 

"Law and order" has thus far been the Gibraltar 
of capitalism — this power to make, interpret and en- 
force laws. The class that possesses such power 
controls society. But continuance of the system de- 
pends on respect for it by capitalists themselves; and 
at present they are doing their very best to shatter it 
to bits. Nothing is so fatal to the existence of a law- 
abiding sentiment in any community as the well- 



37^ THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

founded conviction that the law itself is unjust and 
its administration unfair. The supremacy of capital- 
ism thus far has been due to its combination of wealth 
and intelligence. The worker has no wealth and has 
hitherto been also deficient in intelligence, but there 
has been a great awakening on his part and he is 
learning that his deliverance lies in concerted political 
action, which will take from the capitalistic class con- 
trol of law. When the intelligence of the workers 
generally becomes equal to establishing a solidarity 
comparable to that of their oppressors, their battle 
will be virtually won. They can then make law cor- 
respond in fact to the ideal, make order signify justice 
and not injustice. Then law and order will be re- 
spected, because they will be worthy of respect. They 
will rest on the will of a free people, and will express 
their convictions of the rights of man. Let us pray 
that the twentieth century will witness the passing of 
the old world — this world in which the poor starve 
while the rich die of surfeit; this world where thou- 
sands laugh while millions weep; this world where 
the great masses toil without hope that the favored 
few may play without joy. Let us pray — and labor — 
that the twentieth century may witness the coming 
of a new world in which righteousness shall dwell — 
a world distinguished by a new religion and a new 
social order: the religion of Jesus and the Kingdom, 
and the human brotherhood that He came to establish. 
The Gospel of Jesus in the twentieth century is 
the same as in the first: "The Kingdom of God is 
at hand : repent and believe the Glad Tidings.' ' 



APPENDIX 

A. BIBLIOGRAPHY 

CHAPTER I 

Royce, Josiah, The Problem of Christianity, 2 vols., New 
York, 191 3. 

Smith, G. B., Social Idealism and the Changing Theol- 
ogy, New York, 19 13. 

Smith, Samuel G., Democracy and the Church, New 
York, 191 2. 

Rauschenbusch, Walter, Christianizing the Social Order, 
New York, 191 3. 

Howerton, J. R., The Church and Social Reform, New 
York, 1913. 

Sims, P. M., What Must the Church Do to Be Saved? 
New York, 191 3. 

Kutter, Hermann, They Must; or, God and the Social 
Democracy, Chicago, 191 3. 

Womer, P. P., The Church and the Labor Conflict, New 
York, 1913. 

Trawick, A. M., The City Church and Its Social Mission, 
New York, 1912. 

The Country Church and Community Cooperation, New 
York, 1912. 

Gill, CO., and Pinchot, Gifford, The Country Church, 
New York, 191 3. 

Holmes, J. H., The Revolutionary Function of the Mod- 
ern Church, New York, 191 2. 

377 



37^ THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

Ross, E. A., Sin and Society, New York, 1913. 

Fiske, G. W., The Challenge of the Country, New York, 

1912. 
Wallis, Louis, Sociological Study of the Bible, Chicago, 

1912. 
■Hall, T. C, Social Solutions in the Light of Christian 

Ethics, New York, 1910. 
Euchen, Rudolf, Can We Still Be Christians ? New York, 

1914. 
Mann, J. E. F., and others, The Real Democracy, New 

York, 1 91 3. 
Adams, Brooks, The Theory of Social Revolutions, New 

York, 1914. 
Nearing, Scott, Social Sanity, New York, 1913. 
Downes, L., The New Democracy, Boston, 1910. 
Coffin, J. H., The Socialized Conscience, Baltimore, 1914. 
Schell, Hermann, The New Ideals in the Gospel, New 

York, 1 914. 
Zueblin, Charles, Democracy and the Overman, New 

York, 1 910. 
The Church, the People and the Age, edited by Robert 

Scott and George William Gilmore, New York, 1914. 
Ward, H. F., The Social Creed of the Churches, New 

York, 1 914. 
Tyler, J. M., The Place of the Church in Evolution, Bos- 
ton, 1 914. 



CHAPTER II 

Small, Albion W., Between Eras : from Capitalism to 

Democracy, Kansas City, Mo., 1913. 
Devine, Edward T., The Spirit of Social Work, New 

York, 191 1. 



APPENDIX 379 

Tolman, W. H., and Kendall, L. B., Safety: Methods 

for Preventing Occupational and Other Accidents, 

New York, 191 3. 
Ellwood, Charles A., Sociology in Its Psychological As- 
pects, New York, 191 2. 
Le Bon, Gustave, The Psychology of Revolution, New 

York, 1 91 3. 
Boyd, J. H., Workmen's Compensation and Industrial 

Insurance, 2 vols., Indianapolis, 1913. 
Pouget, fimile, Sabotage (translated by Arturo Giovan- 

itti), Chicago, 1913. 
Quick, Herbert, On Board the Good Ship Earth, Indian- 
apolis, 1913. 
Wallace, Alfred Russel, Social Environment and Moral 

Progress, New York, 191 3. 
Clark, J. B., Social Justice Without Socialism, Boston, 

1914. 
Rubinow, I. M., Social Insurance, with Special Reference 

to American Conditions, New York, 1913. 
Hobson, John A., Evolution of Modern Capitalism, New 

York, 1894. 
Fisher, Irving, Why Is the Dollar Shrinking ? New York, 

1914. 
Lusk, Hugh N., Social Welfare in New Zealand, New 

York, 1913. 
Roberts, Elmer, Monarchical Socialism in Germany, New 

York, 1 91 3. 
Goldmark, Josephine, Fatigue and Efficiency, New York, 

1912. 
Skeels, Isaiah, Cost and Price, Cleveland, 1914. 
Martin, F. T., The Passing of the Idle Rich, New York, 

1911. 
Foster, W. T., The Social Emergency, Boston, 1914. 



380 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

Walling, W. E., Progressivism and After, New York, 
1914. 

CHAPTER III 

Mill, J. S., The Subjection of Women. Many editions. 
Densmore, E., Sex Equality, New York, 1907. 
Schreiner, O., Woman and Labor, New York, 191 1. 
U. S. Labor Bureau, Bulletin 73 : Laws Relative to Em- 
ployment of Women and Children, Washington, 

1907. 
Fawcett, M., Woman's Suffrage — a short history of a 

great movement, New York, 1912. 
Squire, Belle, The Woman Movement in America, New 

York, 191 1. 
Rembaugh, Bertha, Political Status of Women in the 

United States, New York, 191 1. 
White, F., Laws on Marriage, Divorce and Property 

Rights of Women of All States, New York, 1910. 
Dorr, Rheta, What Eight Million Women Want, New 

York, 1 910. 
George, W. L., Woman and To-Morrow, New York, 

I9I3- 
Floyd, Dell, Women and World Builders, Chicago, 191 3. 

Key, Ellen, Love and Marriage, New York, 191 1. 
The Woman Movement, New York, 1912. 

Abbot, Edith, Women in Industry, New York, 1910. 

Van Kleeck, Ellen, Women in the Bookbinding Trade, 
New York, 191 3. 

Butler, Elizabeth B., Women and the Trades (Pitts- 
burgh Survey), New York, 1909. 
Saleswomen in Mercantile Stores, New York, 191 2. 

Martin, Edward Sanford, The Unrest of Women, New 
York, 1 91 3. 



APPENDIX 381 

Goldmark, J. C, Handbook of Laws Regulating Women's 

Labor, New York, 1912. 
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, Women and Economics, New 

York, 1898. 
Morley, Edith J., Women Workers in Seven Professions, 

New York, 1914. 
Van Vorst, Mrs. John and Marie, The Woman Who 

Toils, New York, 1903. 
Cadbury, Edward, and others, Women's Work and 

Wages, New York, 1907. 
Bosworth, L. M., The Living Wage of Women Workers, 

New York, 191 1. 
Nearing, Scott, and N. M. S., Woman and Social Prog- 
ress, New York, 191 2. 



CHAPTER IV 

Nearing, Scott, The Solution of the Problem of the 

Child, New York, 191 1. 
Keeling, Frederic, Child Labour in the United Kingdom, 

London, 1914. 
Engel, Sigmund, The Elements of Child Protection, 

translated from the German by Dr. Eden Paul, New 

York, 1912. 
Flexner and Baldwin, Juvenile Courts and Probation, 

New York, 1914. 
Clopper, Edward, Child Labor in City Streets, New 

York, 1912. 
Key, Ellen, The Century of the Child, New York, 1909. 

The Education of the Child, New York, 1910. 
Henderson, C. Hanford, Pay-Day, Boston, 191 1. 

Education and the Larger Life, Boston, 1902. 

What Is It to be Educated? Boston, 1914. 



382 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

Montessori, Maria, The Montessori Method, translated 
by Anna E. George, New York, 1912. 

Stevens, Ellen Yale, A Guide to the Montessori Method, 
New York, 191 3. 

Smith, Anna Tolman, The Montessori Method of Edu- 
cation, U. S. Bureau of Education, Bulletin 17, 1912. 

Report of Commissioner of Education for 1912, 2 vols., 
Washington, 1913. 

King, Irving, Education for Social Efficiency, New 
York, 1913. 

Ferrer, Francisco, The Origin and Ideals of the Mod- 
ern School, New York, 1913. 

Weeks, Arland D., The Education of To-Morrow, New 
York, 1913. 

Eggleston and Bruere, The Work of the Rural School, 
New York, 191 3. 

Antin, Mary, The Promised Land, Boston, 1912. 

Ayres, Leonard, Laggards in Our Schools, New York, 

1913. 

Holmes, William H., School Organization and the Indus- 
trial Child, Worcester, Mass., 1912. 

Snedden, David, Problems of Educational Readjustment, 
Boston, 1913. 

Best, R. N., and Ogden, C. K., The Problem of the Con- 
tinuation School and Its Successful Solution in Ger- 
many, London, 1914. 

Leake, Albert H., Industrial Education: Its Problems, 
Methods and Dangers, Boston, 1913. 

Riis, Jacob, Children of the Tenements, New York, 1902. 

Addams, Jane, The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets, 
New York, 1912. 

Bancroft, J. H., Games for the Playground, Home, 
School and Gymnasium, New York, 1909. 



APPENDIX 383 

Fisher, H. W., Making Life Worth While, New York, 

1910. 
Groos, Karl, The Play of Man, New York, 1901. 
Gulick, L. H., The Efficient Life, New York, 1907. 
Groves, F. P., A History of Education in Modern Times, 

New York, 191 3. 

CHAPTER V 

De Forest and Veiller, The Tenement House Prob- 
lem, 2 vols., New York, 1903. 

Veiller, Lawrence, Housing Reform, New York, 1910. 

Nettlefold, J. S., Practical Housing, Letchworth, Eng., 
1908. 

Koester, Frank, Modern City Planning and Maintenance, 
New York, 1914. 

Howe, Frederick C, European Cities at Work, New 
York, 1 91 3. 

Riis, Jacob, The Battle with the Slum, New York, 1902. 
How the Other Half Lives, New York, 1890. 

Wilcox, D. F., Municipal Franchises, 2 vols., New York, 
1914. 

Crawford, W. H., Church and Slum, New York, 1908. 

Slums of Baltimore, New York, Chicago and Philadel- 
phia, U. S. Labor Bureau, Washington, 1894. 

U. S. Bureau of Labor, Bulletin 54 : Housing of the 
Working People by Employers, Washington, 1904. 
Many titles under Chapters VI and VII will also be 
found to contain pertinent matter. 

CHAPTER VI 

The Social Evil in Chicago, a Study of Existing Condi- 
tions with Recommendations by the Vice Commis- 
sion of Chicago, Chicago, 191 1. 



384 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

Report of the Vice Commission of Chicago, New York, 

1912. 
Kneeland, G. J., Commercialized Prostitution in New 

York City, with an Introduction by John D. Rocke- 
feller, Jr., New York, 1912. 
Philadelphia Vice Commission Report, New York, 191 3. 
Janney, O. Edward, The White Slave Traffic, New York, 

1911. 
Bell, E. A., War on the White Slave Trade, New York, 

1909. 
Seligman, E. E. A., The Social Evil, New York, 1912. 
Addams, Jane, A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil, 

New York, 1912. 
Flexner, Abraham, Prostitution in Europe, New York, 

1914. 
Kauffman, R. W., The House of Bondage, New York, 

1910. 
Gordon, Ernest, The Anti-Alcohol Movement in Europe, 

New York, 1914. 



CHAPTER VII 

An Open Letter to Society from Convict 1776, New 
York, 191 1. 

Berkman, Alexander, Memoirs of an Anarchist, New 
York, 1912. 

Aschaflenburg, Gustav, Crime and Its Repression, Bos- 
ton, 1913. 

Bonger, W. A., Criminality and Economic Conditions, 
Boston, 1913. 

Ferri, Enrico, Criminal Sociology, New York, 1912. 

Jones, George, A History of Penal Methods, London, 
1914. 



APPENDIX 385 

Hopkins, Tighe, Wards of the State: an Unofficial View 
of Prison and the Prisoners, Boston, 1913. 

Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and 
Correction, Annual. 

Gross, Hans, Criminal Psychology, Boston, 191 1. 

Lombroso, Cesare, Crime, Its Causes and Remedies, Bos- 
ton, 191 1. 

McConnell, R. M., Criminal Responsibility and Social 
Constraint, New York, 191 2. 

Tarde, Gabriel, Penal Philosophy, Boston, 1912. 

Booth, Maud Ballington; After Prison — What? New 
York, 1903. 

Devon, J., The Criminal and the Community, New York, 
1911. 

Life in Sing Sing, by Number 1500, Indianapolis, 1904. 

De Lacy, W. H., Treatment of Criminals by Probation, 
59th Congress, second session, Senate Document 12, 
Washington, 1906. 

Wines, F. H., Punishment and Reformation, New York, 
1910. 

Correction and Prevention, 4 vols., Russell Sage Founda- 
tion, 1913. 

Proceedings of the Annual Congress of the American 
Prison Association, Annual. 

Garofalo, Raffaele, Criminology, Boston, 1914. 



CHAPTER VIII 

Moore, B., Dawn of the Health Age, London, 191 1. 
Hutchinson, Woods, Preventable Diseases, Boston, 1909. 

Conquest of Consumption, Boston, 1910. 
M'Vail, J. C, Prevention of Infectious Diseases, New 

York, 1907. 



3§6 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

Behring, E. A., Suppression of Tuberculosis, New York, 
1904. 

Otis, E. O., Tuberculosis— Its Cause, Cure and Preven- 
tion, New York, 19 14. 

Russell, F. H., Control of Typhoid in the Army, Wash- 
ington, 191 1. ' 

Abbott, A. C, Hygiene of Transmissible Diseases, Phila- 
delphia, 1 90 1. 

Doty, A. H., Prevention of Infectious Diseases, New 
York, 191 1. 

National Association for Study and Prevention of Tu- 
berculosis, Proceedings. 

International Congress on Tuberculosis, Transactions. 

Henry Phipps Institute, Annual Reports of, Philadelphia. 

Salesby, Parenthood and Race Culture, New York, 1912. 

Davenport, C. B., Heredity in Relation to Eugenics, New 
York, 1 91 3. 



CHAPTER IX 

Koester, Frank, The Price of Inefficiency, New York, 

I9I3- 
La Fargue, Paul, The Right to Be Lazy, Chicago, 1907. 

McCann, A. W., Starving America, New York, 1913. 

Hunter, Robert, Poverty, New York, 1904. 

Devine, E. T., Misery and Its Causes, New York, 1909. 

Haggard, H. Rider, Regeneration, New York, 1910. 

Webb, Sidney and Beatrice, Prevention of Destitution, 

London, 191 1. 
Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and 

Correction, Annual. 
Wallis, Graham, The Great Society, New York, 19 14. 



APPENDIX 387 

U. S. Labor Bulletin, 53 and 54 : Cost of Living and 
Retail Prices in the U. S., Washington, 1904. 
Bulletin 64 : Conditions of Living Among the Poor, 
1906. 

Barnett, S. A. and H. O., Toward Social Reform, New 
York, 1909. 

Besant, Walter, and others, Poor in Great Cities, New 
York, 1900. 

Henderson, C. R., Introduction to the Study of Depen- 
dent, Defective and Delinquent Classes, Chicago, 1901. 

Rowntree, B. S., Land and Labor : Lessons from Bel- 
gium, New York, 1910. 

Beveridge, W. H., Unemployment, New York, 1909. 

Nearing, Scott, Financing the Wage-Earner's Family, 
New York, 1913. 

Reducing the Cost of Living, New York, 1914. 

Brandeis, Louis D., Other People's Money, and How 
the Bankers Use It, New York, 1914. 

CHAPTER X 

Beard, Charles A., An Economic Interpretation of the 

Constitution, New York, 1913. 
Farrand, Max, The Framing of the Constitution, New 

Haven, 1913. 
Countryman, Edwin, The Supreme Court of the United 

States, Albany, 1913. 
Judson, F. N., The Judiciary and the People, New 

Haven, 1913. 
Moore, B. F., The Supreme Court and Unconstitutional 

Legislation, New York, 1913. 
Abbot, E. V., Justice and the Modern Law, Boston, 1913. 
Cleveland, F. A., Organized Democracy, New York, 1913. 
Coudert, F. R., Certainty and Justice, New York, 191 3. 



388 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

Haines, C. G., The American Doctrine of Judicial Su- 
premacy, New York, 1914. 

Laidler, H. W., Boycotts and the Labor Struggle, New 
York, 1 914. 

Bulletins of the Labor Bureau, Washington, 1 905-1914; 
contain full and accurate digests of statutes and de- 
cisions of courts pertaining to workers and indus- 
trial questions. 

Mitchell, John, Organized Labor, Philadelphia, 1913. 

Reform in the Administration of Justice, Baltimore, 
1914. 

Hunter, Robert, Violence and the Labor Movement, New 
York, 1914. 



B. PROGRAMS FOR SOCIAL REFORM 

THE PROGRESSIVE PARTY 

Social and Industrial Reform. — Effective legislation 
looking to the prevention of industrial accidents, occupa- 
tional diseases, overwork, involuntary unemployment, 
and other injurious effects incident to modern industry. 

The fixing of minimum safety and health standards 
for the various occupations, and the exercise of the pub- 
lic authority of State and Nation, including the Federal 
control over interstate commerce and the taxing power, 
to maintain such standards. 

The prohibition of child labor. 

Minimum wage standards for working women, to pro- 
vide a "living scale" in all industrial occupations. 

The prohibition of night work for women and the 
establishment of an eight-hour day for women and young 
persons. 



APPENDIX 389 

One day's rest in seven for all wage workers. 

The eight-hour day in continuous twenty-four hour 
industries. 

The abolition of the convict contract labor system; 
substituting a system of prison production for govern- 
mental consumption only, and the application of prison- 
ers' earnings to the support of their dependent families. 

Publicity as to wages, hours and conditions of labor; 
full reports upon industrial accidents and diseases, and 
the opening to public inspection of all tallies, weights, 
measures and check systems on labor products. 

Standards of compensation for death by industrial ac- 
cident and injury and trade diseases, which will transfer 
the burden of lost earnings from the families of work- 
ing people to the industry, and thus to the community. 

The protection of home life against the hazards of 
sickness, irregular employment and old age, through the 
adoption of a system of social insurance adapted to 
American use. 

The development of the creative labor power of Amer- 
ica by lifting the last load of illiteracy from American 
youth, and establishing continuation schools for indus- 
trial education under public control and encouraging agri- 
cultural education and demonstration in rural schools. 

The establishment of industrial research laboratories 
to put the methods and discoveries of science at the 
service of American producers. 

Political. 1 — Direct primaries for the nomination of 
State and National officers, nation-wide preferential 
primaries for candidates for the presidency, direct elec- 
tion of United States Senators by the people. Urge on 

1 Most of the so-called "political" reforms in this platform and 
in that of the Socialists have a plain social bearing. 



39° THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

all States the short ballot, with responsibility to the 
people secured by the initiative, referendum and recall. 

Remaining forests, coal and oil lands, water powers 
and other natural resources . . . are more likely to be 
wisely conserved and utilized for the general welfare if 
held in the public hands, 

The Progressive party, believing that no people can 
justly claim to be a true democracy which denies political 
rights on account of sex, pledges itself to the task of 
securing equal suffrage to men and women alike. 

Restriction of the power of courts: 

First, when an act passed under the police power of 
the State is held unconstitutional under the State consti- 
tution by the courts, the people, after an ample interval 
for deliberation, shall have an opportunity to vote on the 
question whether they desire the act to become a law, 
notwithstanding such decision. 

Second, every decision of the highest Appellate Court 
of a State declaring an act of the Legislature unconsti- 
tutional on the ground of its violation of the Federal 
Constitution, shall be subject to the same review by the 
Supreme Court of the United States as is now accorded 
to decisions sustaining such legislation. 

A graduated inheritance tax as a means of equalizing 
the obligations of holders of property to government. 



THE SOCIALIST PARTY 

Collective Ownership. — First, the collective ownership 
and democratic management of railroads, wire and wire- 
less telegraphs and telephones, express service, steamboat 
lines and all other social means of transportation and 
communication and of all large-scale industries. 



APPENDIX 39I 

Second, the immediate acquirement by the municipal- 
ities, the States or the Federal Government of all grain 
elevators, stockyards, storage warehouses and other dis- 
tributing agencies, in order to reduce the present extor- 
tionate cost of living. 

Third, the extension of the public domain to include 
mines, quarries, oil wells, forests and water power. 

Fourth, the further conservation and development of 
natural resources for the use and benefit of all the peo- 
ple: 

(a) By scientific forestation and timber protection. 

(b) By the reclamation of arid and swamp tracts. 

(c) By the storage of flood waters and the utilization 

of water power. 

(d) By the stoppage of the present extravagant waste 

of the soil and of the products of mines and oil 
wells. 

(e) By the development of highway and waterway 

systems. 

Fifth, the collective ownership of land wherever prac- 
ticable and, in cases where such ownership is imprac- 
ticable, the appropriation by taxation of the annual rental 
value of all land held for speculation or exploitation. 

Sixth, the collective ownership and democratic man- 
agement of the banking and currency system. 

Unemployment. — The immediate Government relief of 
the unemployed by the extension of all useful public 
works. All persons employed on such works to be en- 
gaged directly by the Government under a work day of 
not more than eight hours and at not less than the pre- 
vailing union wages. The Government also to establish 
employment bureaus ; to lend money to States and mu- 
nicipalities, without interest, for the purpose of carrying 
on public works, and to take such other measures within 



39 2 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

its power as will lessen the widespread misery of the 
workers caused by the misrule of the capitalist class. 

Industrial Demands. — The conservation of human re- 
sources, particularly of the lives and well-being of the 
workers and their families: 

First, by shortening the workday in keeping with the 
increased productiveness of machinery. 

Second, by securing to every worker a rest period of 
not less than a day and a half in each week. 

Third, by securing a more effective inspection of work- 
shops, factories and mines. 

Fourth, by forbidding the employment of children un- 
der sixteen years of age. 

Fifth, by abolishing the brutal exploitation of convicts 
under the contract system, and prohibiting the sale of 
goods so produced in competition with other labor. 

Sixth, by forbidding the interstate transportation of 
the products of child labor and of all uninspected fac- 
tories and mines. 

Seventh, by abolishing the profit system in government 
work, and substituting either the direct hire of labor or 
the awarding of contracts to cooperative groups of work- 
ers. 

Eighth, by establishing minimum wage scales. 

Ninth, by abolishing official charity and substituting a 
non-contributory system of old-age pensions, a general 
system of insurance by the State of all its members 
against unemployment and invalidism and a system of 
compulsory insurance by employers of their workers, 
without cost to the latter, against industrial diseases, acci- 
dents and death. 

Political Demands. — First, absolute fredom of press, 
speech and assemblage. 

Second, the adoption of a graduated income tax, the 



APPENDIX 393 

increase of the rates of the present corporation tax and 
the extension of inheritance taxes, graduated in propor- 
tion to the value of the estate and to nearness of kin — 
the proceeds of these taxes to be employed in the social- 
ization of industry. 

Third, the gradual reduction of all tariff duties, par- 
ticularly those on the necessaries of life. The Govern- 
ment to guarantee the reemployment of wage-earners 
who may be disemployed by reason of changes in tariff 
schedules. 

Fourth, the abolition of the monopoly ownership of 
patents and the substitution of collective ownership, with 
direct rewards to inventors by premiums or royalties. 

Fifth, unrestricted and equal suffrage for men and 
women. 

Sixth, the adoption of the initiative, referendum and 
recall and of proportional representation, nationally as 
well as locally. 

Seventh, the abolition of the Senate and of the veto 
power of the President. 

Eighth, the election of the President and Vice-Presi- 
dent by direct vote of the people. 

Ninth, the abolition of the power usurped by the Su- 
preme Court of the United States to pass upon the con- 
stitutionality of the legislation enacted by Congress. 
National laws to be repealed only by act of Congress or 
by a referendum vote of the whole people. 

Tenth, the abolition of the present restrictions upon 
the amendment of the Constitution, so that that instru- 
ment may be amendable by a majority of the voters in a 
majority of the States. 

Eleventh, the granting of the right of suffrage in the 
District of Columbia, with representation in Congress 



394 THE GOSPEL OF JESUS 

and a democratic form of municipal government for 
purely local affairs. 

Twelfth, the extension of democratic government to 
all United States territory. 

Thirteenth, the enactment of further measures for gen- 
eral education and particularly for vocational education 
in useful pursuits. The Bureau of Education to be 
made a department. 

Fourteenth, the enactment of further measures for the 
conservation of health. The creation of an independent 
Bureau of Health, with such restrictions as will secure 
full liberty to all schools of practice. 

Fifteenth, the separation of the present Bureau of 
Labor from the Department of Commerce and Labor 
and its elevation to the rank of a department. 1 

Sixteenth, abolition of all Federal District Courts and 
the United States Circuit Courts of Appeals. State 
courts to have jurisdiction in all cases arising between 
citizens of the several States and foreign corporations. 
The election of all judges for short terms. 

Seventeenth, the immediate curbing of the power of 
the courts to issue injunctions. 

Eighteenth, the free administration of justice. 

Nineteenth, the calling of a convention for the revision 
of the Constitution of the United States. 



FEDERATION OF THE CHURCHES OF CHRIST IN AMERICA 

We deem it the duty of all Christian people to concern 
themselves directly with certain practical industrial prob- 

1 This has now been done. William Banchop Wilson, of Penn- 
sylvania, was nominated by President Woodrow Wilson the first 
Secretary of Labor and was duly confirmed by the Senate. 



APPENDIX 395 

lems. To us it seems that the churches must stand — — 



For equal rights and complete justice for all men in all 
stations of life. 

For the right of all men to the opportunity of self- 
maintenance, a right ever to be wisely and strongly safe- 
guarded against encroachments of every kind. 

For the right of workers to some protection against 
the hardships often resulting from the swift crises of 
industrial change. 

For the principle of conciliation and arbitration in 
industrial dissensions. 

For the protection of the worker from dangerous ma- 
chinery, occupational disease, injuries and mortality. 

For the abolition of child labor. 

For such regulations of the conditions of toil for 
women as shall safeguard the physical and moral health 
of the community. 

For the suppression of the "sweating system." 

For the gradual and reasonable reduction of the hours 
of labor to the lowest practicable point, and for that 
degree of leisure for all which is a condtiion of the 
highest human life. 

For a release from employment one day in seven. 

For a living wage as a minimum in every industry, 
and for the highest wage that each industry can afford. 

For the most equitable division of the products of 
industry that can be ultimately devised. 

For suitable provision for the old age of the workers 
and for those incapacitated by injury. 

For the abolition of poverty. 



INDEX 



Accident, insurance against, 

276; surgical treatment of, 

278. 
Adams Express Company, 306. 
Advertising, economic waste 

of, 76; effect on freedom of 

the press, 317. 
Ahab and Naboth's vineyard, 

3. 

Alice in Wonderland, 299. 

Altenhoff, garden city of, 169. 

Altruism, of Comte, 25. 

American Federation of La- 
bor, 2i, 328. 

America, resources of, 48; not 
the leader of democracy, 49, 
51 ; following the Roman 
Empire, 317. 

American Prison Association, 
218. 

Americanitis, the slum disease, 
148. 

Amos, origin of, 5; cited, 6. 

Anaemia, cause of, 256. 

Armaments, fallacy of, 243. 

Arbitration, in New Zealand, 

314- 

Archbald case, 348. 
Aristocracy, among Hebrews, 

3-7; versus democracy, 17; 

the new, of wealth, 52. 
Arkansas, and the contract 

system, 237. 
Arnold, Benedict, 71. 



Army and Navy, effect of 
standing, 199; typhoid in, 
269. 

Australia, new capital of, 167. 

Automobile, and housing prob- 
lem, 164. 

Baker, George F., quoted, 310. 

Baltimore, department stores 
of, 95- 

Banks, Nathaniel P., m. 

Beatitudes, pretended respect 
for, 107. 

Bennett, Homer Clark, quoted, 
190. 

Berlin, death-rate in, 153; 
model tenements of, 156; 
and city planning, 175 ; syph- 
ilis in, 185; anti-war demon- 
stration in, 246. 

Berne, Socialist congress in, 
246. 

"Best citizens," ethics of, 358, 
365, 366. 

Bimson, chief of police, 365, 
366. 

Blacklist, declared legal, 354. 

Blackstone, cited, 70, 347. 

"Bobbin Boy," in. 

Boards of health, and child la- 
bor, 117; power of, 262, 274. 

Boorrioboola Gha, 33. 

Boston and Maine railway, 
"unscrambled," 312. 



397 



398 



INDEX 



Boston "tea party," 337. 

Boycott, declared illegal, 354. 

Brotherhood, in teachings of 
Jesus, 17; implications of, 
19 seq.; and service, 24; 
among workers, 299. 

Bryce, Viscount, on garden 
cities, 168. 

Bucks Stove & Range Com- 
pany, 354. 

Burns, detective, 349. 

Business, ethical character of, 
290, 300. 

Caisson disease, 267. 
Capital punishment, abolished 
for women, 88; indefensible, 

234. 

Capitalism, waste of, 78; pre- 
vents progress, 91 ; and pros- 
titution, 184; vicious circle 
of, 198; maintains vice, 209; 
founded on exploitation, 
285; its use of inventions, 
295; debases journalism, 316; 
opposed to labor, 328; domi- 
nant in society, 333; resorts 
to brute force, 359 seq.; 
ruthlessness of, 370, 371 ; de- 
fiant of law, 375. 

Capitalist, unnecessary, 295. 

Celibacy, encourages vice, 199. 

Charity, futility of, 69; tax on 
industry, 104, 105; social sig- 
nificance of, 275, 302, 304. 

Charles I, and his tyranny, 

337- 
Chicago, department stores of, 
95, 194; slums of, 148; its 
playgrounds, 166 ; absorbs 



Pullman, 169 ; segregation 
in, 204; poverty in, 302. 

Child, Bill of Rights of, 108; 
need of protecting, in; ex- 
ploitation of, 109. 

Child Labor, in canning fac- 
tories, no; too costly, 112; 
and play, 113; socially un- 
necessary, 115; unprofitable, 
116; legislation on, 117; due 
to greed, 118, 143; and fam- 
ily life, 119; and education, 
120 seq.; domestic and agri- 
cultural, 143; in streets, 144; 
regulation of, 146. 

Children's Bureau, 26b. 

Church, leaning to aristocracy, 
17; opposes true Gospel, 22; 
an object of service, 30; ne- 
cessity of awakening, 34; 
must be leader, 35 ; a dynamo, 
42 ; not advancing, 44 ; main- 
tained by capitalists, 46; 
quasi partnership with vice, 
206; preaching brotherhood, 
299; wasting power, 313; 
shrinks from radical meas- 
ures, 326; alliance with capi- 
talism, 330; its future atti- 
tude, 331; workers' hatred 
of, 374- 

Cigar Makers' International 
Union, 336. 

City planning, in Australia, 
167; in Germany, 174, 175. 

Civic pride, false, 155 ; in Ger- 
many, 173. 

Civilization, failure of, 54. 

Clark, Chief Justice Walter, 
quoted, 341. 



INDEX 



399 



Clans, the Hebrew, i; ethics 

of, 10. 
Classes, reason for, 60. 
Class consciousness, nature of, 

327. 

Coal mines, and exploitation, 
301. 

Colorado, penal farm of, 239; 
miners' strike in, 368; Fed- 
eral grand jury's report, 
369; courts of, 371. 

Collins, Justice, cited, 207. 

Collier's, on Scott case, 367. 

Combination, or conspiracy, 355. 

Commissioner of Education, 
report of, 121. 

Commission on Industrial Re- 
lations, 366. 

Competition, opposed to Gos- 
pel, 82. 

Comptroller of Currency, 310. 

Comte, and altruism, 25. 

Conservation, what it implies, 
103. 

Conservatism, Professor Ross 
on, 43; of judges, 106, 342. 

Constitution, Federal, and Su- 
preme Court, 343; Mr. 
Roosevelt on, 359; over- 
ridden by capitalists, 360 seq. 

Consumers' League, on living 
wage, 193. 

Contempt proceedings, origin 
of, 339J should be abolished, 
341. 

Contract system, in prisons, 
236 seq.; Southern experi- 
ence with, 238; in Oregon, 
240. 

Conversion, kind needed, 14, 
3& 



Corporations, Blackstone on, 

70; size of, a menace, 81. 
Cost of living, 118, 305. 
Coudert, Frederic R., quoted, 

347 
Courts, obstacles to social 
progress, 106; juvenile, in 
Philadelphia, 157; abuse of 
injunction law, 335 seq.; de- 
crease of respect for, 342 ; 
powers of, 343 ; administer 
injustice, 345; uphold capi- 
talism, 353; of Colorado, 

37i. 

Courts, decisions cited, 51, 76, 
143, 210, 336, 341, 364. 

Crime, cost of, 216 seq.; homi- 
cidal, 217, 234; among rich 
and poor, 219; caused by 
poverty, 220, 228; cannot be 
expiated, 222; nor avenged, 
222, 223; cure for, 225, 227; 
punishment fails to prevent, 
226; more humane treat- 
ment of, 227; indeterminate 
sentences for, 230; parole 
system and, 231 ; first offend- 
ers and, 232; and capital 
punishment, 234; and pris- 
ons, 234 seq.; and women, 
242; war the greatest, 242. 

Cross, social significance of, 39. 

Damien, Father, 252. 
Danbury, hatters of, 355. 
David, and Hebrew monarchy, 

3. 
Death-rate, in slums, 153; of 

infants, 257, 260. 
Declaration of Independence, 

in San Diego, 362. 



400 



INDEX 



Democracy, in teaching of 
Jesus, 17, 19, 53; as yet un- 
tried, 20, 21 ; America not the 
leader in, 49; industrial, 52, 
55; hope of, 53; and legisla- 
tion, 83; and vice, 208; op- 
posed to war, 247; and inde- 
pendent judges, 344. 

Department Stores, women in, 
95, 99 5 and the press, 317. 

Despotism, among the He- 
brews, 2; industrial, 55; ju- 
dicial, 336, 345; economic, 
52, 55, 76, 293, 300, 334. 

Diaz, President of Mexico, 248. 

Dickens, on Podsnappery, 183. 

Disease, God not author of, 
58, 251 ; the act of man, 251 ; 
economic significance of, 
252; tuberculosis, 254 seq.; 
beri beri, 258; and ignor- 
ance, 260, 261 ; occupational, 
263 seq.; typhoid, 268 seq.; 
and vivisection, 270 seq.; in- 
surance against, 275. 

Dives and Lazarus, 282. 

''Divine right," of judges, 342. 

Dorcas, 304. 

Dresden, and her garden city, 

171. 
'Due process of law," 364. 

Dusseldorf, and city planning, 
176. 

Education, cost of, 121 ; and 
illiteracy, 122; theories of, 
123; practical vs. cultural, 
124; in public schools, 125 
seq.; Froebel's contribution 
to, 129, 131 ; Montessori 



method in, 130; aim of, 132; 
secondary, 133 seq.; Booker 
Washington and, 134; and 
technical schools, 135; and 
physical culture, 138 seq.; 
and food, 140; and housing, 
153; in hygiene, 260, 262. 

Edward VI, labor laws of, 318. 

Efficiency, forbids overstrain, 
74; Secretary Redfield on, 
80 ; and minimum wage, 103 ; 
opposed to child labor, 115; 
among girl workers, 198 ; and 
education, 262; and occupa- 
tional disease, 265. 

Elijah, prophet, 5. 

Elisha, prophet, 5. 

England, repeals conspiracy 
laws, 51 ; adopts minimum 
wage, 102; illiteracy in, 122; 
treatment of criminals in, 
226; picketing legalized in, 
336; social legislation of, 

345- 
Environment, a saved, 40; and 

character, 83, 250. 
Essen, garden city of Krupps, 

169. 
Ethics, defects of current, 14; 

new, 41 ; capitalistic, 44 ; 

double standard of, 190; 

and environment, 83, 250; 

and wealth, 291 ; capitalist, 

defended, 351 ; should make 

distinctions, 373. 
Eugenics, 280 seq. 
Europe, segregation in, 205. 
Evangelism, new and old, 14. 
Evening Post, quoted, 195. 
Expiation, and criminal law, 

222. 



INDEX 



401 



Exploitation, opposed to stew- 
ardship, 24; and the child, 
109; origin of, 284; founded 
on property in land, 286 seq.; 
not guilt of individuals, 297; 
of telegraphers, 301 ; by ex- 
press companies, 306; and 
freedom, 313; New Zea- 
land's lesson on, 313 seq.; in- 
separable from wage sys- 
tem, 315 ; indirect effects of, 
316; see Profit. 

Factories, earnings of women 
in, 95 ; tuberculosis in, 256 ; 
sanitation of, 263. 

Fatherhood of God, in Old 
Testament, 9; Jesus on, 11- 
13 ; means brotherhood of 
man, 18. 

Federation of Churches, on 
poverty, 329. 

Fels, Joseph, quoted, 291. 

Feminism, defined, 86. 

Ferrero, quoted, 90. 

Flexner, Abraham, quoted, 
205. 

Food, deficiency of, 257; high 
prices of, 282. See Malnu- 
trition. 

Ford Automobile Company, 
321 seq. 

Foss, Governor, quoted, 218. 

France, first offenders in, 
233- 

Froebel, and education, 129. 

Gambling, commercialized, 187. 

Garden cities, 168 seq. Pull- 
man, 168. Altenhoff, 169; 
Port Sunlight, 169; Letch- 
worth, 171; Hellerau, 171. 



Georgia, and juvenile crime,233. 

Germany, illiteracy in, 122; 
secondary instruction in, 
137; garden cities of, 171; 
and the slum problem, 172 
seq.; municipal enterprises 
in, 176; and war scares, 244. 
245 ; effect of social insur- 
ance on, 27J. 

God, ideal of, taught by Jesus. 
11, 221; not author of social 
injustice, 58; does not will 
disease, 58, 251. 

Golden Rule, 27, 107, 114. 

Gompers, Samuel, 338. 

Good Roads, how obtainable, 
240. 

Good Samaritan, 253, 329. 

Gospel of Jesus, heart of, 13; 
means liberty, 16; on altru- 
ism, 25; new or old, 26; 
orthodox idea of, 68; for- 
bids exploitation, 69, 301 ; 
forbids two ethical stand- 
ards, 70; why socially in- 
effective, 71 ; condemns com- 
petition and monopoly, 82; 
relation to women, 89, 97; 
and social duties, 108; and 
schools, 129; and slums, 181; 
and vice, 206; and prayer, 
251; and vivisection, 270; 
and disease, 279; and social 
ills, 318; making it mean 
something, 329; and labor 
problems, 372; condemns 
violence, 373; in twentieth 
century, 376. 

Graham, Sylvester, 259. 

Greed, and social evils, 151 ; 
see Exploitation, Profit. 



402 



INDEX 



Hague, tribunal of, 72. 
Harlan, Justice, quoted, 344. 
Hatfield, Governor, 363. 
Hebrew, clans of, 1 ; monarchy 

among, 2 ; slavery among, 3 ; 

and social struggle, 3, 7, 9; 

their prophets, 5; clan 

ethics of, 10. 
Hellerau, garden city, 169. 
High Commission, tyranny of, 

337, 338. 

High Finance, and the Mor- 
gans, 296, 297; and T. W. 
Lawson, 307; its exploits, 
309; and Money Trust, 309 
seq.; and Ford, 323. 

Homicides, comparative ratios 
of, 217; protection against, 

234- 

Housing, good, 156; and pri- 
vate enterprise, 159; prob- 
lem of, in Philadelphia, 164; 
see Slum. 

Howells, William D., quoted, 
229. 

Huerta, and revolution in 
Mexico, 248. 

Humaneness, progress in, 226. 

Hunter, Robert, on poverty, 
283. 

Hygiene, sex, 190. 

Hyndman (H. M.) on revo- 
lution, 285. 

Idaho, Supreme Court of, 341. 

Ignorance, cause of vice, 184, 
189 ; of public men, 261 ; and 
infant mortality, 260; see 
Illiteracy. 

Illinois, State Senate, investi- 
gation by, 95. 



Illiteracy, in various countries, 
122. 

Immigration, effect on illiter- 
acy, 122; on slums, 148. 

"Inalienable rights," 294. 

Indianapolis, mayor of, 357. 

Individualism, failure of, 26. 

Industry, and education of 
girls, 98; effect of technical 
schools of Germany on, 138; 
socialization of, 286, 296, 319 
seq.; and profit-sharing, 321 
seq. 

Industrialism, end of, 290. 

Industrial Workers of the 
World, 21, 361, 365, 366. 

Inefficiency, deadly sin, 37; of 
capitalism, 78; and over- 
work, 74, 267. 

Infant mortality, 257, 260. 

Injunction, abuse of by courts, 
335 seq.; justification of, 336; 
real object of, 337; should 
be limited, 341. 

Injustice, society refuses to 
consider, 303; see Justice, 
social. 

Insurance, fire, cause of crime, 
220; social, 275. 

Interstate Commerce Commis- 
sion, 291. 

Invention and capitalism, 
295- _ 

Investigations, Illinois State 
Senate, 95; futility of, 186; 
Congressional at Lawrence, 
360. 

Isaiah, prophet, 4, 5. 

Italy, social legislation of, 
345- 



INDEX 



403 



Japan, and war scares, 244. 
Jehovah, exclusive worship of, 

Jeshurun, ancient and mod- 
ern, 317- 

Jesus, his idea of God, n-13; 
his teaching revolutionary, 
15, 26; on brotherhood, 17; 
love and forgiveness, 18, 19; 
on stewardship, 24 ; on altru- 
ism, 25; prophet of democ- 
racy, 53; Great Physician, 
279. 

Jones, "Mother," 364. 

John ( Baptist ) , questions 
Jesus, 15. 

Johnson, fire commissioner, 
220. 

Judas, 71, 291. 

Judges, Bourbon, 106; crimin- 
ality of, 339; "divine right" 
of, 341 ; W. H. Taf t on, 342 ; 
"independence" of, 3445 fail 
to comprehend their time, 
346; slaves of precedent, 
342; little brothers of the 
rich, 348. 

Jury, right of trial by, 337. 

Juvenile offenders, in Phila- 
delphia, 157; in Georgia, 
233; in Wisconsin, 233. 

Kavanagh, Judge Marcus, 
quoted, 222. 

Keen, Dr. W. W., on vivisec- 
tion, 271. 

Key, Ellen, quoted, 109. 

Kindergarten, 129. 

Kingdom, Jesus' teaching on, 
13; means social transfor- 
mation, 32; Ritschl on, 251. 



Krupps, their garden city, 169, 

and war scares, 245. 
Kutter, Hermann, quoted, 22. 

Labor, defined, 75; vs. play, 
130. 

Labor Argus, suppressed, 363. 

Laxssez faire, doctrine of, 81. 

Land, private property in, 
among Hebrews, 2-5 ; cause 
of discontent, 57; exploita- 
tion founded on, 286; and 
ethics, 287. 

Land tax, in New Zealand, 

314. 

Laud (Archbishop), 338. 

Law, teaching of Hebrew, 9; 
administration of criminal, 
218; defined, 332 seq.; made 
for and by whom, 350; does 
not secure justice, 352; 
President Taf t on, 353 ; "due 
process of," 364. 

"Law and order," defined, 332 
seq.; unfair administration 
of, 348 seq.; judged by 
fruits, 358; does not really 
exist, 375; must be Chris- 
tianized, 376. 

Lawlessness, case of McNa- 
maras, 303, 349, 367, 372 ; de- 
nunciations of, 332; of 
judges, 340; a symptom of 
health, 374. 

Lawrence, strike at, 93, 318, 
350, 360 seq. 

Lawson, Thomas W., quoted, 
307. 

Lazear, Captain, 252, 270. 

Lathrop, Julia C, report of, 
260. 



404 



INDEX 



Lead poisoning, 265. 

Legislation, on child labor, 
117, 143, 147; on housing re- 
form, 160, 161, 166; against 
vice trust, 200, 210; on pub- 
lic health, 268. 

Leipzig, and housing problem, 

175. 

Leisure, social value of, 74; 
women's need of, 90. 

L'Enfant, Major, plan of 
Washington, 167. 

Letch worth, garden city, 169. 

Lever Brothers, establish gar- 
den city, 169. 

Lincoln, Abraham, 20, 65. 

Lindenfelt, Lieutenant, crime 
of, 37}- 

Liquor, increasing consumption 
of, 212; solution of problem, 
214. 

Little Falls, strike at, 93, 318. 

Living wage, 193; see Wage. 

London, slums of, 148; syph- 
ilis in, 185 ; and anti-war 
demonstration, 246. 

London, Samuel H., cited, 187. 

Louisiana, timber strike in, 
362. 

Ludlow, massacre at, 371. 

Maccabees, and the social 

struggle^ 9. 
Machiavelli, quoted, 59. 
McNamaras, case of, 303, 349, 

367, 372. 
Machinery, "labor-saving," 80; 

fails to profit workers, 91. 
Madero, and revolution in 

Mexico, 248. 
Magna Charta, 337. 



Maine, prohibition in, 214. 

Malnutrition, effects of, 257 ; 
extent of, 304. 

Mammon, worship of, 21, 22, 
282, 291, 331. 

Manhattan, land in, 67; prosti- 
tutes of, 187. 

Mann act, 210. 

Manual training, 133. 

Marriage, antidote to vice, 
199; "virtuous," 201; state 
regulation of, 280. 

Marx, Karl, definition of 
wealth, 292; and Engels, 
360. 

Maryland, repeals conspiracy 
laws, 51. 

Massachusetts, and child la- 
bor, 146; cost of crime in, 
218. 

Mellen, Charles S., quoted, 
291. 

Mercury poisoning, 265. 

Messiah, Hebrew ideal of, 8; 
in time of Jesus, 9, 15 ; limi- 
tations of, 10. 

Metropolitan Life Insurance 
Company, and model tene- 
ments, 178. 

Mexico, recent troubles in, 
248; backwardness of, 372. 

Micah, prophet, 3, 5, 6. 

Michigan, copper strike in, 
368. 

Middle Ages, and social jus- 
tice, 72. 

Middleman, elimination of, 

305. 
Mill, John Stuart, quoted, 295. 
Minimum wage, for women, 

102; in Victoria, 103; em- 



INDEX 



405 



ployes and, 104, 196; eco- 
nomic criticism of, 105; and 
child labor, 147; palliative 
only, 195. 

Ministers, teach capitalistic 
ethics, 44; attitude to work- 
ers, 41, 65, 93, 358, 373. 

Missions, new significance of, 
32. 

Mitchell, John, 338. 

Mob, rule of, 340. 

Monopoly, and prices, 54; op- 
posed to Gospel, 82 ; govern- 
ment ownership of, 315. 

Morgan, J. P., his profession 
of faith, 23, 80; social ser- 
vice of, 296, 297; on Money 
Trust, 310; on "unscram- 
bling of eggs," 311. 

Mouth-hygiene, effect of, 141. 

Municipalities, and rapid tran- 
sit, 164; enterprises of Ger- 
man, 176. 

Munich, and garden cities, 171, 
175. 

Naboth's vineyard, 3. 

Napoleon, quoted, 72. 

Nazareth, Jesus in synagogue 
of, 16. 

Nehemiah, and the social 
struggle, 9. 

Nevada, and child labor, 146. 

New Hampshire, and child la- 
bor, 146. 

New York (State) and trades 
unions, 51 ; canning factor- 
ies of, no; and physical ex- 
amination of children, 117; 
and child labor, 146; penal 
farm of, 239. 



New York (City) department 
stores of, 95; slums of, 148, 
149; housing problem in, 
160; living wage in, 193; in- 
cendiary fires in, 220; homi- 
cides in, 244, 

New York, New Haven & 
Hartford railway, 309, 312. 

New Zealand, infant mortality 
in, 257; social experiments 
in, 313 seq. 

Newspapers, affected by ex- 
ploitation, 316; and advertis- 
ing, 317. 

Nietzsche, scorn of Christian- 
ity, 17. 

Nomads, Hebrews originally, 
1 ; the Rechabites, 4. 

Nordau, Max, quoted, 75. 

Niirnberg, and garden cities, 
171. 

Ohio, penal farm of, 239. 
Oklahoma, and child labor, 

146. 
Oligarchy, judicial, 345. 
Oregon, and penal system, 24a 
Overwork, effects of, 74, 267. 

Palliatives, futility of, 326. 

Paris, syphilis in, 185; anti- 
war demonstration in, 246. 

Parole system, 231. 

Paterson, strike at, 46, 93, 318, 
365; investigation of, 366. 

Patriotism, false and true, 

243. 

Penology, false, 221 seq.; true, 
224, 229; and prisons, 236. 

Pensions, old age in New Zea- 
land, 315. 



406 



INDEX 



Pennsylvania, and women 
workers, 92; smaller cities 
of, 96; and child labor, 146. 

Philadelphia, department 
stores of, 95 ; slums of, 148 ; 
juvenile courts in, 157; and 
housing problem, 164; living 
wage in, 193. 

Philanthropy, social value of, 
302. 

Phosphorus poisoning, 265. 

Picketing, in England and 
America, 336. 

Pitney, Judge, quoted, 76. 

Plague, Great Black, see Syph- 
ilis. 

Plague, Great White, see Tu- 
berculosis. 

Plato, on end of State, 82. 

Play, value of, 113. 

Podsnap and Podsnappery, 
183. 

Poffenberger, Judge, quoted, 

364. 

Police, compact with vice, 187; 
uphold capitalism, 357. 

Port Sunlight, garden city, 
169. 

Pouget, on social ethics, 27; 
cited, 75. 

Poverty, and slum, 152; in 
Berlin tenements, 157; cause 
of sexual vice, 188, 198; de- 
fined in social terms, 192; 
and crime, 220, 228; charity 
no cure for, 275 ; cause of 
all social ills, 282; Robert 
Hunter on, 283; and exploi- 
tation, 284; and socialization 
of industry, 296; investiga- 
tion of, 302; sovereign cure 



of, 319; and profit-sharing, 
321 seq.; Federation of 
Churches on, 329. 

Prayer, Gospel idea of, 251. 

Prisons, defects of, 235; re- 
forms in, 236 seq. 

Prodigal Son, parable of, 12, 
191. 

Profit, and child labor, 143; 
and housing problem, 163; 
and the saloon, 211; is theft, 
290; everything sacrificed to, 
294; see Exploitation. 

Profit-sharing, possibilities of, 
321 seq. 

Prohibition, fails to prohibit, 
213. 

Property, origin of private, 
66; offenses against, 228; 
"sacredness" of, 293; true 
function of, 294. 

Prostitution, commercializa- 
tion of, 182, 187; the sin of 
society, 183 ; and capitalism, 
184; inevitable, 192; relation 
to wages, 193-19S; futile 
remedies for, 200, 202 seq.; 
Dr. Flexner on, 205; and 
property, 206. 

Prussia, illiteracy in, 122. 

Pullman, town of, 168. 

Punishment, no cure for 
crime, 226. 

Queensbury, Marquis of, and 

industry, 81. 
Quinlan, Patrick, case of, 365. 

Rapid transit, and municipali- 
ties, 164. 
Rechabites, 4. 



INDEX 



407 



Redemption, in Old Testa- 
ment, 8, 10. 

Redfield, Secretary, on labor 
costs, 80. 

Rent, nature of, 67. 

Retardation in schools, causes 
and cure of, 127 seq. 

Retribution, Gospel idea of, 
221. 

Revenge, forbidden by Jesus, 
222; anti-social, 224. 

Revolution, proclaimed by 
Jesus, 15; Hyndman on the 
coming, 285; stages of, 320; 
in industry, 346, 347. 

Ritschl, Albrecht, quoted, 251. 

Rockefeller, John D., rise to 
wealth, 50; origin of for- 
tune, 292; nature of his 
wealth, 293. 

Rockefeller, John D., jr., tes- 
timony on Colorado strike, 
370. 

Rockefeller Bureau of Social 
Hygiene, 187. 

Rock Island railway, "un- 
scrambled," 312. 

Roman Empire and its decay, 
90. 

Ross, Professor E. A., quoted, 

43, 313. 

Roosevelt, Theodore, and the 
Constitution, 359. 

Rosenthal murder, 188. 

Russell, Dr. James, quoted, 134. 

Russia, laws protecting wom- 
en, 92; homicides in, 217; 
social legislation of, 345. 

Sabotage, criticisms of, 69. 
St. Francis, 304. 



Saloon, secret of its immunity, 
187; commercialization, 212; 
how to banish, 213. 

Salvation, what it is, 13; or- 
thodox doctrine of, 30; new 
ideal of, 38, 40. 

Salvation Army, 304. 

Samaritan, Good, 253, 329. 

San Diego and the I. W. W., 
361, 362. 

Sanatoriums, 254, 256. 

Sanitation of factories, 263, 
268. 

"Scab," ethical status of, 70. 

Schedule K and its beauties, 
361. 

Schools, failure of public, 125 
seq.; industrial and techni- 
cal, 135; continuation, 136. 

Scotland, illiteracy in, 122. 

Scott, Alexander, case of, 367. 

Selling, waste in, yy. 

Seneca, quoted, 224. 

Sentences, equal, 226; indeter- 
minate, 230. 

Segregation, and social vice, 
203-205. 

Shaw, George Bernard, 
quoted, 182. 

Sherman Act, effect of, 355, 
356. 

Sin, false distinctions about, 
14; new definition of, 36; 
deadly, 37; social, 313. 

Slavery, among Hebrews, 3 ; 
chattel and wage, 76; social 
foundation of, 287; essence 
of, 300. 

Slum, in Europe, 149; and 
greed, 151 ; and death-rate, 
J 53; not necessary, 154; and 



408 



INDEX 



health, 158; and private en- 
terprise, 159; and play- 
grounds, 166; problem in 
Germany, 172 seq.; in small- 
er cities, 180; and Gospel of 
Jesus, 181 ; and vice, 197. 

Small, Professor, quoted, 295. 

Social justice, futility of many 
efforts at, 34; and the land, 
57, 62, 67; and inheritance, 
68; in Middle Ages, 72; dif- 
ficulty in attaining, 80; and 
ignorance, 102, no; and in- 
difference, 107; and good 
housing, 152. 

Social Service Commission, 

94- 

Socialism, morality of, 196; 
Bismarck and, 178; and war, 
246. 

Society, regeneration of, 28; 
how constituted, 61. 

Solomon, and Hebrew mon- 
archy, 3. 

Spain, war with, 248; social 
legislation of, 345. 

Spencer, Herbert, on govern- 
ment, 82. 

Star Chamber, Court of, 337, 
338. 

State, Plato on, 82. 

Steel Trust, on sabotage, 69; 
interest of in war, 245; re- 
lief work of, 276; favors to, 

351.. 

Sterilization, compulsory, 281. 

Stewardship, Jesus on, 24. 

Stocks, ''watering" of, 306 seq. 

Strafford, 338. 

Strassburg, and housing prob- 
lem, 175. 



Strikes, and injunctions, 337; 
at Lawrence, 93, 318, 350, 
360 seq.; at Little Falls, 93, 
318; in Louisiana, 362; at 
Paterson, 46, 93, 318, 365, 
366; in Michigan, 368; in 
Colorado, 368 seq. 

Stuart tyranny, and America, 

Suffrage, women, 86; in New 
Zealand, 315. 

Sun Printing Company, case 
of, 336. 

Surgery, stimulated by social 
insurance, 278; and vivisec- 
tion, 270 seq. 

Syphilis, a penalty, 252; and 
eugenics, 280. 

Taft, William Howard, on so- 
cial justice, 66; on judges, 
342 ; on law, 353. 

Talent, career open to, 72. 

Taxation, by private persons, 
54; of society by industries, 
115; power of, 293. 

Taylor, Charles Keen, and 
physical culture, 141. 

Taylor, Frederick W., quoted, 

353- 

Telegraphs, in New Zealand, 
315; exploitation of opera- 
tors, 301. 

Tenements, rear, 157, 158; 
model, 159 seq.; defined, 165 ; 
"dumb bell," 162; how fi- 
nanced in Germany, 178; 
manufactures in, 198. 

Testamentary rights, 67. 

Thrift, meaning of, 60. 

Toil, defined, 75. 



INDEX 



409 



Tools, private ownership of, 
300. 

Trades unions, 20, 51. 

Tribune, New York, on Pater- 
son troubles, 367. 

Trusts, Brewers', 212; Money, 
309 seq.; socialization of, 321 ; 
Standard Oil, 349; Woolen, 
and Sherman Act, 356; 
Lumber, 362. 

Tuberculosis, a penalty, 252; 
cost of "cures," 254; preva- 
lence of, 255 ; cause of, 256 ; 
in certain trades, 264; and 
eugenics, 280. 

Tuskegee Institute, 134. 

Typhoid, scourge of, 268; pre- 
vention of, 269. 

Unearned increment, 58, 67, 

179. 
United Charities Society, on 

poverty, 302. 
University, of Wisconsin, 34; 

exists for culture, 124. 
Utah, and child labor, 146. 

Vaughn, Father, quoted, 29. 

Veiller, Lawrence, quoted, 
158. 

Venereal disease, prevalence 
of, 185; see Syphilis. 

Vera Cruz, occupation of, 249. 

Vicarious suffering, 12. 

Vice, and the police, 187; and 
poverty, 188 ; economic 
causes of, 195; in guise of 
marriage, 201 ; segregation 
no remedy for, 203-205 ; and 
politics, 207, 208; and capi- 
talism, 209; and the law, 210. 



Victoria, and the minimum 

wage, 103. 
Violence, forbidden by Jesus, 

15 ; two kinds of, 373. 
Vitamines, and food values, 

258. 
Vivisection, value of, 270 seq. 

Wage, a living, 193; child 
earners, 109; minimum, 102, 
103, 104, ios, 147, 195, 196. 

Wage system, and progress, 
106; and exploitation, 315. 

Wall Street, men of, 297; 
leaders in, 310. 

War, crime of, 242; and ar- 
maments, 243 ; professional 
obsession about, 244; war 
against, by workers, 246; 
private, by capitalism, 372. 

Ward, Professor, on philan- 
thropy, 302. 

Washington (State) reforma- 
tory of, 240. 

Washington (City), plan of, 
167, 174. 

Washington, Booker, and edu- 
cation, 134. 

Waste, of capitalism, 78; of 
human life, 79. 

"Water" (fictitious value) 306 
seq. 

Wealth, ethical significance of. 
291 ; nature of modern, 293 ; 
see Mammon. 

Weekly Issue, and Paterson 
strike, 367. 

West Virginia, and coal 
strike, 363. 

Western Union Telegraph 
Company, 354. 



4io 



INDEX 



White, Alfred T., and model 
tenements, 159. 

White, Andrew D., quoted, 
217. 

Wilson, President, and Mex- 
ican troubles, 309; on bank- 
ing system, 309; surrender 
to Money Trust, 311. 

Wisconsin, university of, 34; 
and child labor, 146; and ju- 
venile offenders, 233; and 
accident insurance, 276; and 
eugenics, 280. 

Wisdom of Sirach, 9. 

Women, "wrongs" of, 87; 
laws favorable to, 88; in in- 
dustry, 92, 93; wages of, 94, 
95 ; causes of economic de- 
ficiency of, 97; competition 
among, 99; lack of organi- 
zation, 100; and domestic 
service, 101 ; minimum wage 



for, 102; effect of economic 
dependence on, 201. 

Wood, W. M., of Woolen 
Trust, 349, 350. 

Work, universal duty of, 57; 
right of all, 63; zoological 
morality of, 75. 

Workers, not ethically su- 
perior, 20; and "a full din- 
ner pail," 50; their demands, 
62; their needs, 64; ethics 
of, 70; women, 92; in cloth- 
ing trades, 93; strike of, 
against war, 246; insurance 
of, 275, 276; taxed for non- 
workers, 298; slaves of capi- 
talism, 300. 

World, New York, on Michi- 
gan strike, 368. 

"World," new idea of, 36. 

Zebedee, sons of, 23. 
Zueblin, Professor, quoted, 50. 



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